Demons
by tolbean
Summary: Alex is back at Brecon Beacons for good this time; forced on to a veteran Unit and a new Sargent that think of him as more of a novelty than a soldier. But then a familiar face turns up, revealing some dark secrets, and suddenly 'Lynx' doesn't seem quite so funny anymore.
1. Chapter 1

**Sup. Hi. Hola. Niihau. Bonjour. Hullo.**

 **This is *THE REWRITE OF my first story, please follow, favourite and and review.**

 ***** SO IN THE LAST FIC IT WAS A LITTLE AU, BUT IN THIS ONE IT FOLLOWS ON AFTER SCORPIA RISING EXCEPT HE DIDNT GO LIVE WITH THE PLEASURES.**

 **WARNING: language.**

 **-UR FAVE BOI**

The day starts as it usually does - Alex falls out of his bed, flailing and screaming, springing to alertness when he hits the worn patch of carpet next to his bed. He slumps in embarrassment when he realises that it was just another nightmare.

He peels the sheets off of cold-sweat covered skin, cringing at the spots of blood from the slowly healing burn wrapped around his right shoulder like charred armour. He refuses to look into the mirror as he collects a towel off the floor for a cold shower, not wanting to see his little collection of scars or the haunted, fragile look he sports after nightmares.

Also, he can't stand seeing Julius in his place.

And, because he feels like a bit of an emo when he looks at himself and sees black hair (not necessary said Smithers, but just for a bit of extra cover) in a 'high fashion' messy undercut. Don't even get him started on the tattoo sleeve '6 had wanted him to have to look older for his last mission. At least the tattoo's actually quite beautiful, but Alex despises the fact that it's all around a scorpion. Blunt's sense of humour must be fucked.

It's not been too long since he took a bullet to his chest, around 2-3 months he bets, and with barely any time in the hospital and little to no meds or PT it's not healing as fast as Alex wants it to. The skin still stings and twinges when he touches it with anything. Whilst Alex isn't a doctor or a field medic, he knows that people with a regular bullet wound would still be in physical therapy and resting, not out running and fighting for their lives.

He has to wrap his wrist in medical tape to avoid the tattoo being seen by the other students, and that along with his 'edgy' hair has him a new moniker at school - cutter. The teachers don't really give a shit any more about what the other students call him. Secretly, they probably have the same horrid opinions of him.

His breakfast is - as usual - a bland energy bar and a piece of dry toast. Anything heavier so soon after a nightmare would send him into fits of either anxiety or sensory overloads, Alex can't tell which is which. He doesn't show up to the sparse therapy lessons '6 arranges for him.

But - like a good little spy - Alex pushes on, slipping his house keys in his pocket and pouring himself a cup of black coffee. He still needs to go to school, anyway. No matter how pointless it is seeing as he'll probably fail his GCSES. Anything is better than being in this house, alone.

He can't cycle anymore, since some Yr.7's thought it would be tough of them to slash the tires on Alex's bike, but walking is better for him. It calms him down.

School feels like a chore as he suffers through the hours - whilst he's getting increasingly better grades in tests he's still missing multiple piles of homework and class work. And the notes slipped into his locker, the hostile looks and sniggering whispers make Alex's throat close up.

They just don't understand.

He wishes he still has a friend to unload on, but Tom lives with his brother in Italy, somewhere, and they don't talk anymore. It's safer for them that way.

And who fucking cares what the few articles on PTSD he's read says, Alex can keep a lid on it all of he wants to. He's a bloody spy and whilst he isn't happy about it, he is definitely more than adept to handle his own emotions.

And school - it seems so pointless these days, especially after all that's happened to him. He doesn't even know what he wants to do anymore. They'd had a career counsellor in to speak with the Yr 10's and 11's a few days ago, and the lady told Alex from his vague answers that he should consider law enforcement - but there's no chance in the fiery blazes of hell Alex is going to let himself be dragged into that world.

Alex sits alone in the library trying to catch up on work during lunch time, and also to avoid his new English teacher - Miss O'Dellon - that keeps trying to talk to him. She wants to know about 'how he's feeling' because he always looks 'very distant' and 'sad' in class.

Her concern for him will disappear once she talks to the rest of his teachers. He just has to give it a few days and she'll be accusing him of cheating and disrupting class.

The walk home feels blurry and stilted to him, just like the rest of the day had.

When he finally gets inside, he slides down the wall until he's curled into a ball, hands pressed over his ears. He just feels so overwhelmed. He can't keep doing this. It's so lonely.

And that's when the phone rang.

Another piece of him breaks away inside, splitting straight off his soul and exploding in his head in fiery sound and colours.

Alex curls further to the floor and stays there - not just because his eyes and ears and skin and brain prickled, but because he doesn't want to pick the fucking thing up. His hands shake with tremors so bad that Alex puts his fingers in his mouth and bites down.

The phone rings again.

Again. (He bites down harder.)

Again. (He breaks the skin.)

Again. (He tastes iron.)

Alex dives for the small table, ripping the phone from the handle and holding it so hard he can imagine it cracking in his hand. He ignores the blood dripping down his fingers, clotting around the teeth marks and staining the sleeve of his navy school blazer.

"Fuck off. I just got back from blowing up a bloody terrorist base. The least you could do is find someone willing to do your shit for you, Blunt." Alex's voice is quiet, but sharp and cold and painful all the same. He is half expecting a sigh from the other end, but when a bland and detached voice sounds through almost immediately he isn't surprised. After all, you need to be human to sigh.

"Alex, you have no choice. By law," Alex's mouth twists violently, anger that he tries to push into a dark and deep part inside of him rapidly bubbles to the surface. MI6 have showed him time and time again that they are above the law, and Alex is bellow it."We cannot allow you to live unsupervised when both you and the house you live in are under our possession. "

The blood rushing around his head and pounding against his ears sends a wave of nausea to his stomach. _They couldn't._

"We are placing you under Witness Protection. Smithers will not be removing the dye from your hair, nor the tattoo from your previous excursion. This is, of course, to separate Alexander John Rider from Alexei Gregory Smith. Your new identity. Feel free to create whatever background for your new cover you feel prudent."

Blunt sounds so pleased with himself, and still so unaffected at the same time. The phone almost crushes in Alex's hand in an attempt to keep his calm, but he quickly looses it when the head of Covert Operations tells him that they're going to burn his house down.

The house he had raised himself in. The house he'd dreamt of coming home to every mission. The house Jack had lived in.

The crack it makes in his façade of professionalism is enough to completely split it in two, dragging everything forward for the world - for Blunt - to see(hear). He snarls at the fucker through the phone, listing every curse and profanity he knows in any language in a hoarse and dangerous voice.

"Now, Alex, none of that. Be reasonable-" the man sounds no different, he sounds like he's soulless. Alex always thought that about the man in spite, but now he knows it to be true.

It irks him further.

"I am being reasonable, Blunt! This is my life, you bloody well know I can handle myself, I don't need a fucking babysitter-" Alex's hand is gripping tightly on the back of the dining room chair, the wood cracking and his knuckles bright white.

Alan Blunt finally raises his voice, but it still sounds just as frustratingly vacant and smug as always. "Enough! Agent Rider, unless you wish to remain an Agent, you will allow us to move you to Brecon Beacons. We will not risk the safety of those surrounding you, by leaving you vulnerable. Either you act sensibly and do as we say, or you'll find yourself regretting it when your school, let's say, is bombed."

Brecon Beacons? SAS? Bomb? Risks? The words swirl around his head at the breakneck speed of a hurricane, and Alex is stuck, not knowing what he should be angry about more.

"This is the same as what you did last time! Bloody blackmail! I never wanted to be a spy, and I don't want to be a fucking soldier either, stop trying to make me to work for Queen and Country when Country has been abusing me for the last fucking year-" He knows he should stop before his mouth gets him in even deeper trouble. But frankly, he's too angry and in too much pain to care.

"Alexander John Rider, this matter has already been sorted. An agent is waiting outside with all of your necessities, ready to take you to the SAS camp. You shall be partnered with B-Unit, their best. We hoped to have you with K, as you were familiar with one another, but they are currently touring in places we aren't allowed to discuss with civilians- officially what you are as of now." His drops voice to a scarily calm and biting whisper, and Alex's blood freezes in his veins. "So, Alex, go outside and get in that car before I decide you could be useful in infiltrating the latest child prostitution ring. Our informant tells us they are looking for more young male sex workers."

With a scowl on his face, angry tears welling up in pained and frozen brown eyes, the Alex throws the chair splintering in his bloody hand at the wall with enough force to crack the cement and the picture frames on the wall to fall and shatter. "YOU FUCKING BASTARD, I HATE YOU!" Storming out of the room, calloused and scarred hands pressed tightly into fists, Alex slams the door so hard the sound is still ringing in his ears as he sulkily slumps into the leather of a black land rover. His mind is jumbled and he swears to the nonexistent gods that the car is spinning and oh he is going to throw up- no, no, pull it together.

As he rests his sweaty forehead against the window, he brings his hands up to his mouth to pick away the splinters and blood. He feels so small, so powerless. He almost lets out a few tears before he snaps himself back to reality and tries to build himself up again, coiling up his emotions in chains and shoving them tightly back into place. His skin feels prickly and sore with raw vulnerability.

There are no upsides, Alex realises, as they drive on. He will never again have to go on a mission, sure, but life as a soldier would be just as bad - if not worse. At least he could still drift between a state of anger and indifference at home, but under constant training and scrutiny? He doesn't think he'd be allowed to have a cold without someone taking the piss.

He's shivering, but no matter how much he turns up the heat in the back of the car he can't quite warm himself. It's a frostiness that seeps through his flesh and into his soul, and he feels pathetic and sad and sorry for himself.

He zones in between realities for the next hour, his head pounding from weeks of sleep deprivation, his chest aching and throat feeling closed. When they finally pull into the muddy Welsh camp hours and hours later, it's nearly dawn. They'd driven through the night.

There are very few soldiers milling about, some only jogging around for a light morning run. The air is biting but refreshing, and the clouds a regular light grey-white. Alex feels a slight crispness as his combat boots touch the ground - having changed into standard SAS kit when they'd stopped to use the restrooms, along with wrapping more medical tape around his fingers - and the mud not too wet.

Slinging his duffle over his right shoulder - quickly swapping to the left when he realises how fucking stupid that idea was - Alex makes his way over to the Sargent's hut.

He knocks once, stiffly and firmly, and then waits rigidly behind the door. When the door swings open, Alex walks in briskly, standing before the Sarge's desk like a coiled spring. He schools his expression into neutral professionalism, and doesn't blink when the man shouts at him. His fingers clench and flinch behind his back, but what this unfamiliar Sargent can't see won't hurt anybody.

"I push my men to be the best of the best, and then I push them even more because that is how we work in the SAS! We are professionals, elitists, experts and veterans! Now I have a prissy rookie tagging along with my best unit for God knows why, and I don't know a bloody thing about you! I don't even have your fucking name and age! How old even are you, you look barely bloody 20 years old?! In my camp, you are to be treated like a soldier, and whatever age you really are will not make a difference when it comes to effort! I'm not expecting you to keep up with my best men, you useless maggot, but I am bloody well expecting you to try until every bone in your body is broken and your muscles turn to mush! I will not tolerate any laziness, you belong to me now, do you understand me, Lynx?!"

"Yes, sir!" The (newer, younger and thinner) Sarge is no less intense than the man who'd been in charge earlier in the year, but he doesn't scare Alex. He isn't frightened often anymore. He sees a glimmer of satisfaction in the Sarge's eyes - most likely thankful that at least he wasn't a wimp - but it's immediately replaced by sourness and disinterest. "Cabin One, hop to it. I expect you to be at your first course promptly, soldier!"

With the Sargent's dismissal, Alex leaves with a stiff back and locked jaw. But even under his rigidness, he can't help but be relieved.

This Sargent doesn't know who he is. To the SAS, he is simply a young recruit fast-tracked by the Special Intelligence Services because of potential. That means they haven't been told about all the... Other things about him that '6 liked to exaggerate. Like his medical records - which out of context seems very very bad - or even his mission records.

It helps that in the almost-year since he'd last been at Brecon Beacons, his hair is no longer blonde. And he has a tattoo, which should mean that he's older than 18, at least.

Also, since his last visit, he's grown taller. He's probably got another growth spurt to go, but just over 5'9 is a more than good enough height for 14 turning 15 year old, and decent enough for the age he's trying to pull off now. Whatever that is, anyway. 20?

He's worked off all of the fat in his body - which is probably unhealthy, but oh well - and is now all muscle. Not because he's bulky, but because he hasn't eaten properly for a few weeks. But it's not like he does that on purpose or anything. He just can't keep down heavy meals.

But yeah - he looks almost completely different now. Even his cheekbones have sharpened and his jaw line has squared out. It's not obvious he's 14 unless you look for it.

As Alex walks along the rows of huts and obstacles and low buildings, he realises that Cabin One is by far the nicest cabin. Perks of being the best and most hard-working Unit, he guesses. It's larger than the other huts, uses the Instructors bathroom and shower stalls because its closest, and the roof looks a little thicker than the other's. When he knocks, a satisfying dense sound echoes out and Alex fills the time waiting for B-Unit to get up and dressed by making sure the tape on his wrists and knuckles are still clean.

The man that opens the door is a sleepy but bright-eyed man in his early 30's. He's tall, with broad shoulders and a trim waist, a crossed scar on the bridge of his nose that trails on one side into his eyebrow.

Seeing Alex's stance and (measly, impersonal) bag, he pulls himself to attention and salutes with ease, and Alex salutes back. "Lynx, reporting as Sharpshooter for B-Unit, sir." His tone is stoney professional, and the man echoes it with a, "Croc, Leader and Medic of B-Unit."

Croc reaches out his hand to shake after they get the formal stuff out the way, and Alex - Lynx - grips firmly and shakes once, not reacting to the hard squeeze Croc gives.

The man clicks his tongue with a nod, a raise to his eyebrows as he opens the door and whistles to the other two members of the unit. Alex is stepping through the door with his small duffle bag as the other men stand to (a slightly more casual) attention.

The first man is a giant, 6'3 with bulky shoulders and arms but friendly laugh and smile lines, blondish-silver hair and smudged sleep around his eyes. The second man is partly Italian, Alex thinks, with olive-toned skin and curly chestnut hair a little longer than regulation is supposed to allow. He is more of an average height, thank god, at just under 6'0. They're both in late twenties to mid thirties, too, he guesses.

"Bear, I'm this team's Linguist. I organise our strategies, too. Welcome to B-Unit, Lynx." Bear. Fitting name for such a large man.

"I'm Panther, B-Unit's Techie. Planes, cars, communications and stuff if you didn't already know. Nice to meet you, Lynx." Panther nods at him with a neutral quirk of the lips, his eyes running up and down Alex and assessing him.

'Lynx' shakes their hands, too, and puts his bag on the empty cot. They seem a lot thicker than the ones he remembered from training. He isn't sure wether it's just because they aren't rookies anymore or because this Unit is obviously the favourite around here.

Seemingly reaching his point of resistance, Croc sits down on the cot next to his and ruffles through his own stuff. "So, Lynx, where were you before SAS? You look a little...young."

Alex had to hand it to him, the man doesn't fidget or bounce or show any expression other than a professional interest and a bit of friendly warmth. Alex is impressed. He feels like an amateur child actor sitting next to an Oscar winner.

But he's been anticipating this question, so Alex shrugs, and bends to redo the laces on his boots so they can't gleam anything from his expressions. "I was in MI6, can't say where, but basically they'd plucked me right out of school-" he has to duck his head further to his boots so they don't see the haunted waters churning in his eyes ."-and made me fill in on some über dangerous mission a family member of mine was supposed to be doing. Last minute."

He lets his voice sound just bitter and cold enough to show the Unit he is not pleased with this fact. It's not even acting, here.

"They'd pulled me from that once it was over, pushed me through a mini BB course and regime and shoved me in here." He sighs and shakes his head, shrugging slightly as he pulls on a heavy canvas jacket over his long sleeved, military standard shirt. "It's not like I was going to be anything else anyway."

He has, actually, told the truth. Just not all of the truth.

At the same time, he's not being too open or trustworthy. No names, places, backstory or age is offered out and even the other soldiers could tell he's probably skipping around some stuff, but that is only fair. They're all strangers.

Panther and Bear nod at each other. "'6 are real bastards, Lynx, you should try and avoid them from now on. We had a kid sent here about, what, about 10 months ago? It was very hush hush, but we managed to squeeze out of the old Sargent once he'd left, that SIS were using Cub - the kid - for suicide missions. "

Fuck. Suicide missions?! He didn't know that!

Alan Blunt is much more of a nutter than he'd previously thought.

Whilst Alex fumes and shakes on the inside, 'Lynx' pales. He shifts and chews on his lip, trying to display the thoughts of 'that could have been me' to the unit.

Inside, again, he screams, because that was him. Still is him. Always will be him.

"Bloody awful, if you ask me." Croc adds on. The man hasn't stopped looking at him, something unsettled under his mask of a clam and collected leader but Alex has never been good at reading through expressions to see what people were thinking - outside of fights, that is. Hopefully it's just the leader evaluating his new soldier, and not anything distrusting or sinister. "He kept up ridiculously well, but he was so unhappy. Ill for some of the course, I think. Might have been depressed. God knows that rookie unit of his - bunch of jealous newbies, really - didn't make things better for the kid."

Shit. Alex is going to have to remember very carefully that Croc is not only a leader observant of his team's behaviour, but also a Medic looking out for everyone's health above that. He's got to be very careful with his body language and actions, Croc's - and Bear and Panther for that matter, too, he has to assume - eyes are probably sharper than K-Unit's were.

Fuck. Like this isn't hard enough already.

When they go down to the Mess Hall, it's still early and not many Units are inside, as a whole at least. Panther swings an arm over his shoulder, dragging him along and Alex grimaces before he can help himself. He can only hope that it's not paid much attention to. Alex almost - almost, he's not that bad at acting after all - cringes again when he sees the raised eyebrow and tilt of the head sent from Croc to Bear when Panther turns to chat about some facts on the SAS.

Alex sits along with B-Unit at breakfast, pushing around plain oatmeal in his bowl but not eating more than half, and stays quiet; nodding and responding in all the right places.

So far, his plan of staying under the radar isn't working great for him. He's going to have to come up with something today to fit in with the Unit. Croc is already calling bullshit on his story, Alex just knows, and Panther is somehow projecting himself as some kind of mentor/guide for him. Bear just looks amused at his very presence.

Alex supposes it's his fault for not planning for any different outcomes. He had been expecting to be treated like utter shit, but looking at the situation as a whole he thinks this is much worse. He now has to put effort into the whole 'I'm older than I look and I'm not that interesting I swear' thing, and he's actually being watched closely by neutral eyes.

He bets Alan Blunt is laughing it up somewhere big time, relishing in the shitstorm he's just started.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks to my first 3 reviewers; Insanely Me for being the first to review, it meant a lot to me and I love your own stories.**

 **Also to seth 8627 for commenting 2nd, thanks (•_•)_/***

 **Have a flower.**

 **And very special thanks to BrigithBriice, and YES thank you - Blunt is such a bastard, right? Your review made me smile!**

 **And a super mega thanks to X4uth0r for a very thorough and immensely helpful review. Your own stories are absolutely brilliant and I am so thankful that you read through my work and gave useful, intelligent constructive criticism. Not many who review can do that and it actually be helpful, instead of sounding rather picky, but please know that you have made me so aware for what I need to do to improve my writing as a whole - not just this story. Thank you.**

 **And Yassen shows up in this, probably in a few chapters but eh, at least a bit later.**

 ****REWRITTEN TO BE NOT AS SHIT HAHA**

They are still sitting at the table in the mess hall when A-Unit walk in through the double doors. Alex is twisting his spoon in his plain wet oatmeal, coating it thinly and bringing it up to his mouth to 'eat' to make his breakfast look fuller. He doesn't know if it's working on the whole unit, because Panther has engaged him with a dramatic re-telling of the horror stories about each course. Hands flying and flicking his eyes everywhere as he moved his shoulders to roll with his body, Alex decides the man must have children, or at least nephews/nieces or a younger sibling. He doesn't think you can engage people so quickly in a story without the practice.

He'll deny it if anyone asks, of course, but Alex finds himself really drawn into Panther's stories. He tries not to let it show on his face, to not seem like a child wrapped up in a bed time story, but in reality he's never really had a bedtime story before. Unless lectures count, in that case Ian had told him many bedtime stories.

A-Unit are apparently partnered with B-Unit in terms of their tours and leave, along with a handful of missions. It's obvious to Alex that they are all as close as a family should be, and Alex firmly sticks to keeping his focus on Panther's unique description on the 'assault course designed by satan himself' so he doesn't have to intrude on their banter just yet. He is very much used to being the outsider pretending to be on the inside, anyway, so it's easy to slot into a larger group where attention would be split around.

"Panther, shut up and leave Lynx alone for a minute. He's only just got here. Don't drive him away. Lynx, this is A-Unit." Croc tugs Alex away from - the now overly fake-offended - Panther with a hand on his left shoulder, deliberately tight.

Fuck MI6, this is so stupid. Even when he's not on a bloody mission he's still bloody undercover.

Alex faces the men in front of him with a closed lip smile, nodding his head at them. He feels very young around these men, and doesn't really want to be here, but he never wants to be anywhere MI6 want him. He deals with it.

A trim man with cropped ginger-blonde hair and friendly wide smile nods at him, holding out a calloused hand with a scar curving around the tip of his forefinger. "Wasp. I'm Unit leader and linguist for A." Alex shakes his hand, not too tightly but not too lax, and nods again. Wasp pats the shoulders of the two dark skinned men sitting either side of him, introducing them. Shark sits opposite Croc, ('The mother he- feck off, don't pinch me, anyway, Shark's the medic.') and Raven, ('The baby of the group. Ah, don't give me that look! Anyway, Raven's the techie.') opposite Panther. The tall, lithe man with dusky skin and curly black hair sitting the other side of Shark is Stag ('Our special little sharpshooter who should really be called Puppy, because honestly that's what he is.'), and Bear sits opposite him.

Alex waves with two fingers and runs the names again in his head, making sure he remembers who's who. He doesn't feel like he needs to comment anything there, so he doesn't, but since he can't ask Panther to continue his stories without looking pathetic, Alex simply grabs his cup of water and sips it. His oatmeal had become vastly unappealing around five minutes ago, but when he had looked to the soldiers they'd not only finished grand bowls of the stuff, but were devouring pots of fruits and slightly lumpy yogurt.

Wasp digs a spoon into a bowl of thick, beige wheat stuff and eats it with gusto, but unlike the rest of his Unit he is at least eating with manners. Alex is almost certain Stag is going to give himself severe indigestion from the speed he is devouring his yogurt. In between his mouthfuls, Wasp kicks Croc in the shins. Alex can feel his leg move under the table. Croc looks up to the man, a raised eyebrow lifted smoothly in an arch. Alex is envious of how cool and collected Croc always is. It's fucking unfair.

Wasp nods at Alex, eyes still on Croc. "So, Sarge finally found someone to take over for Bear's awful excuse of language fluency?" The grin on his face is mischievous and sharp, and he laughs a sharp barking sound in response to the indignant curses Bear throws at him from the other end of the bench. Croc settles a smug smirk on his face, bemusement in his eyes as he casually twists a fork in his pot of watery yogurt and strawberry bits.

"Oh, Lynx isn't our new linguist." For what Alex supposed is dramatic effect, Croc takes a slow bite into another piece of limp fruit, swallowing sharply. He looks up into Wasp's eyes with satisfaction as he pats Alex on the shoulder again. "He's our new sharpshooter."

The whole of A spit and choke on their mouthfuls of food, eyes wide out of their heads. Alex feels for a moment out of sorts, not quite understanding the reaction and feeling somewhat offended before he remembers his youthful and timid appearance is... Not the norm for a sharpshooter.

Sharpshooters aren't actually mandatory in every single one of the Units, mostly because you'll never need so many snipers in one camp. This is because a sharpshooter - an official one, anyway - has to have an abnormally accurate aim, incredible reaction times, and the SAS standards for this are ridiculously high. Alex thinks that even if he isn't putting on a character - and is just Alex instead - they would still have a hard time believing he could be so highly qualified. It should take years to learn and practice this under military training.

(SCORPIA weren't quite following military training, though.)

Stag stands abruptly and shakes his hand as if he were telling them off. "No no no, Croc, he is not a sharpshooter, he is a-a- he's a fucking foetus." The look on his face is slightly spacey but very adamant, his voice tinged with an accent Alec has never heard before, and if Alex isn't portraying a confused and startled expression he would be chuckling. The rest of the Unit seem to be looking at Alex as if he is some extra terrestrial being, waiting for something to snap them out of their own lines of thought.

Panther doesn't really come to his aid, though.

The soldier throws up his hands as if he were saying, 'I know, right?' and angles his head at Alex with a questioning look on his face. "Yeah, Lynx. How old are you?"

Oh shit. With all of these soldiers looking at him there is no way they would all take his word for it immediately, no matter how great he is at lying and-

"B-UNIT! I WANT YOU ON THE ASSUALT COURSE IN 2 MINUTES OR YOU'LL BE RUNNING LAPS UNTIL YOU PUKE!"

Phew. Saved by the Sarge. That gives Alex just a little more time to pull himself together, hopefully all he'd need.


	3. Chapter 3

**So again many thanks to all of my reviewers, your comments really gave me a huge boost in confidence. I want to be a writer when I'm older, but at 13 it's pretty hard to get solid advice and help from teachers and such. My big brother is great, though, taking time to pick apart my grammar and suggest good books for inspiration - so I'd like to dedicate this story to my awesome big bro.**

 **I've also found writing in this tense (and on this site) really improves grammar and diction, along with awareness of mistakes. I love you all for your encouragement and comments!**

 **And I've tried not to make Alex seem like a God or anything, so excuse me if he doesn't automatically break every single record in camp. Throughout this, I've tried to realistically pick apart what skills Alex would have developed over his missions and the methods he would use. Seeing as his missions were unconventional, it's entirely plausible that so are his techniques.**

 **Please keep reading and reviewing! I'll try to keep updating regularly - hopefully a chapter every other week from now on.**

 ****AGAIN, REWRITTEN TO BE LESS AWFUL AHAHAH**

When B-Unit arrive at the assault course, an instructor is standing stiff backed and sour faced by the starting point. His hair is shaven and peppery, his cheeks hollow and flushed and his grey eyes bulging like a toad's. A fleshy, plump nose with crisscrossing thin purple veins is an indicator to Alex that, along with the chunk of scarred flesh in the place of his ear, this man has been in many skirmishes and is a man he does not wish to anger. (After all, one does not burst a blood vessel in the flesh of their nose if one has not been punched with surprising force.) However, seeing as there are many men Alex has angered before that he shouldn't have - terrorists, psychopaths, narcissistic geniuses etcetera, etcetera - he's not so sure how this next hour or so will end out.

Alex stands at attention with the rest of his Unit; stretching as tall as he can make himself, his knees straight and his joints locked tight and expressions tightly wound and pushed back. The Instructor - Tiggs, Alex hears Croc address the man as they fall in before the starting point - keeps his icy gaze firmly on Alex's own dispassionate brown eyes. He feels his mouth constrict tight around his tongue as he looks into freezing grey iris' and beady pupils. It feels as if the man is looking through him, dismissing him with a hint of a sneer on his lips. The man huffs quietly, looks to Croc and starts to drill him instead with questions on the 'ruddy little kid tagging along with his favourite troop', as if Alex isn't standing just 6 feet away.

A lesser soldier would be irritated by the blatant dismissal and disrespect, but Alex is far too busy trying to gather himself after that awful, ungodly stare. He barely even reacts when the Instructor calls him 'a snotty rookie'.

Even as Instructor Tiggs moves his attention to scribbling angrily in the clipboard in his marked hands, Alex still feels exposed. His skin is prickling with a sense of vulnerability, but within seconds Alex is quickly locking up his frazzled state of mind, is shoving it into one of the empty spaces deep inside his subconscious. His body only just settles into a safe amount of layers between himself and the rest of the world, when Bear is suddenly leading him by the shoulder - a little too suddenly, Alex notes, by the horrid stretching feeling he feels over his healing burns - to stand in front of him and behind Croc.

"Ignore the old fuck, he's just in a mood 'cause he likes us and not you-" a startled snort makes Alex cough on his own spit, and his eyebrows raise slightly at the bluntness in Bear's tone. However Alex is starting to get the gist that Bear doesn't have much of a filter, and doesn't care too much about the effect his words have, either. "-but today we're supposed to be evaluating you. Just keep up with Croc as best you can, and I'll make sure you don't break your neck." Bear pats him on the shoulder heavily, probably trying to be reassuring but actually coming across quite threatening. Alex bites his lip sharply to keep from showing any of the crippling pain he's currently feeling (that would be, of course, showing weakness). He can taste the iron in his mouth, and it sends his head ringing.

Croc starts running briskly, at a cruel pace between a jog and a sprint, and Alex is very much relieved to slip into the escape from too-observant eyes. There is no way, when they duck under the cargo net and start army crawling fast through the wet grass and grainy thick soil, that B-Unit can pin all of their attention on him. So Alex lets himself sink into the familiar feeling of the stretching and contracting of his muscles, doesn't care about his shoddy acting skills, revelling the almost pleasant burning of his leg muscles and the adrenaline that pumps through him like morphine.

Alex is shooting up from under the net about 10 metres behind Croc, with Bear behind him at a similar distance away. The next obstacle in his way is the tall, smooth wooden wall with barely any grip in between planks, but Alex has already learnt the trick of launching yourself as high as you can, kicking up before your hands realise they aren't holding onto anything, and stretching for the top of the wall with your fingertips. Because of the nasty chaffing and twinges that run up and through his right shoulder from the raw patch of burns there, though, Alex has to swing himself up relying on his left arm to do all the work and for the right to simply pivot and drop him the other side.

He remembers that last time he'd done this course, he'd tried to foolishly kick away from the wall like he'd done the other side. It resulted with him always landing with a thud on his back, bruised, and having to scramble through the rest of the course as Wolf shouted and jeered at him. As he's letting go this time, though, he simply just bends his legs, tucks, and rolls into another brisk jog as swiftly as he can. His shoulder aches and his bones practically groan in protest, but Alex quickly pushes all sense of self pity as far away as he can.

The tire run is hard work on his knees, which are already aching from the net-crawl and wall, but he supposes that's the point of putting them straight after the other. The SAS are almost as sadistic as Blunt. He has to flick up his feet to be extra sure he doesn't trip on the black rubber, seeing as his legs are shorter than those belonging to the men that usually run the course. The ache in his shoulder settles into a throbbing pulse of pain, and Alex is almost thankful for it (but he's not, because, you know, it hurts), using it to keep his pace consistent and his breathing controlled. The next two obstacles are much less painful, running shin deep in heavy water and then walking over a thin beam as fast as you can without falling into the mud below. Alex manages to catch up further to Croc - who is quite a far bit ahead - by sprinting straight across the beam in long, balanced leaps. Bear makes some sounds of alarm, before following after at a more sane pace.

From there, it's a clear kilometre over a rocky, dusty path that winds around the back of the lake. Alex uses it to his advantage greatly. Knowing there is only one more obstacle after the run - a rock wall with a plank at the end to jump off onto the large net beneath - he runs at a very quick sprint that puts him almost in equal distance between Bear and Croc. With an impressive show of his stamina, he keeps up his pace until he's at the foot of the rock wall.

It's completely vertical, with circles and slits cut into the wood worn and softened with use. Alex uses his left arm to reach as high a handhold it can reach, and pulls his legs up to the slots as close beneath them as possible. Because of this, he looks like he's hanging in a crouch, right hand gripping any handhold close enough for balance as he stretches his arm and legs out fluidly until he's almost standing up against the wall with one arm outstretched. Quickly, though, he grips onto a square hold and tucks his legs under him again.

Because of his frogg-ish tactic, Alex reaches the top only 30 seconds or so after Croc crawls out of the net, and runs the 400 metre stretch to the line where Instructor Tiggs is waiting. It's slower than he likes, but it saves a great deal of pain for his mangled right side. As Alex falls from the thick wood plank protruding from the other side of the wall, he turns in the air, adrenaline pumping and body feeling weightless and weighted at the same time. He relaxes his body as much as he feels safe with, so as he hits the net he merely bounces slightly before he's able to crawl out and onto the ground again. The rope had pressed hard against the burns on his shoulder, and Alex can feel his back stinging as he jogs as fast as he can towards the finishing point. His legs feel stunted, and his bullet wound is starting to throb in time with his shoulder, but Alex ignores the pain - yet again - and simply keeps running.

Croc is there waiting with a bottle of water and a pat on the back; luckily (for once) missing his bad shoulder. Bear follows about 10 seconds behind. Alex isn't surprised, though, because the man, naturally, would have had much more energy left for the 400 metres than he did. Alex is still only 14 (well, almost 15) but he's greatly improved since his last visit. He's much more used to this sort of exercise now, at least.

Panther follows just seconds after Bear, dramatically dropping to his knees and groaning loudly. His knees are covered in mud, there is a twig in his hair and he's pouting like a toddler. "Never again, oh please oh please never again!" Alex pants a chuckle when the Instructor whacks the soldier on the head with his clipboard - hard - and stands before Alex. His back immediately straightens, and he drops the arm curled above his head down to his side again. Tiggs' mouth twists into a prune shape, eyes searching Alex's face as said boy stands there rigidly. Finally, the man turns to Croc and nods. "I guess he'll do."

The Instructor walks off after shoving the clipboard into Bear's hands, and Alex forces himself to slump with a huff, acting relieved. Panther jumps up by his side and ruffles his hair - which feels weird for Alex, because of the new haircut. "Yay! Tiggs likes you! We get to keep you!" The man(-child) turns his face to Croc, a teasing grin on his face. "We get to keep him!"

Croc rolls his eyes, and Bear shoves Panther away from Alex where he trips over his own feet. "Oh shut up Pan, he ain't a pet." He pats Alex on the (left, thank god) shoulder as Croc meanders beside them. "C'mon, Lynx, we're off to sign you up for a language class." They start walking, ignoring Panther as he moans dramatically and scrambles behind them.

And even as Alex laughs and shoves around with B-Unit, he can't help but still feel disturbed. There's just something about the way it feels so domestic and happy, he knows it can't be all perfect. There has to be something wrong with them-

Speaking of, what actually happened to B-Unit's old fourth-member?...

"So, Bear's got his special classes with other linguistic people, most of the soldiers have got Arabic - but we're not letting you take that one, because Panther's in it and frankly we don't trust him to not drag you into trouble-"

"Oi! Sod off!"

...Alex guesses he'll just have to investigate this so-called 'perfect Unit' himself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hullo frens. Sorry if you felt this update has taken a while, but my anxiety has been acting up lately.**

 **I just wanted to say, in response to a few reviews (WHICH I FUCKIN LOVE LIKE OMG TANKS VERY VERY MUCH ILY) that I'm not going to make Alex superhuman, because despite his ridiculous skills and unnaturally developed thought process and such, he's still 14. The only skills where he's going above and beyond these ELITE GROWN MEN AND VIGOROUSLY TRAINED SOLDIERS is when it comes to his skills with fire arms and unusual weaponry. This is his role in his unit, after all. And in my opinion, the language skills he's got (fluent in Spanish, French and German and Russian, along with some alright Japanese and Mandarin skills thrown in) are justifiable from both canon and my own hopes for this story. Japanese and Mandarin - his extensive training in martial arts would have definitely resulted in learning some of the language. Russian because I think that would be something useful for me to use later on in the story (much later, but still happening bc I love Yassen so much and OOOH SPOILER AH). The other are canon or understandable enough.**

 **And this chapter is in the POV of Croc for the first bit, oooh**

 **-tolbean**

 ****REWRITTEN AGAIN TO MAKE BETTER**

In the single hour or so that Croc has had to assess his new unit member (and, if the lad managed to tough out this first month, his new brother in arms, too) he can say for certain that he is both significantly awed and pissed.

Now, this is of course entirely understandable - the soldier they'd been waiting on for _over a year t_ urned out to be a fresh-faced ex-spook. If this isn't bad enough, the kid is also expected to be a seasoned-bloody-sniper with absolutely spiffing aim and quick fingers. His hair is messy, his eyes are cold, his body looks too lean to be healthy and overall he seems far more suited to college than he is the SAS.

At least, that was what Croc's initial thoughts had been.

But now, after this measly hour and a bit Croc finds himself more disturbed than angry, and that itself disturbs him more. For starters, there is no honest-to-God way Lynx is a day over 20. Then there's the added fact that he's so blatantly exhausted - the bags under his eyes look to be made of leather. His skin is both unhealthy anaemic, but at the same time, tanned from sun exposure. The tape around Lynx's hands set off alarm bells all around Croc's head, though he's a bit miffed to not know quite why the lad's hands disturb him so much. It might be the horribly tough callouses he'd felt when shaking his hand, or maybe the way they seem to twitch and tense seemingly in random moments.

Then comes the factor of the big problem, the unknown little bit of info, the clue that would lead Croc to just exactly what might be going on with his new-found teammate: the injury Lynx is quite obviously hiding from them. Well, if he's being completely fair, it really isn't obvious at all. Croc is certain he's the only one that has managed to pick up the tight lips and locked fingers, the subtle shifting of weight and the slightly glazed glances and shakes of the head. But that's the thing, really, that worries Croc the most; Lynx appears to be quite the actor and, dare he imply, manipulator. The [[haha fake lol]] raven-haired young man is rather worryingly sly at hiding injuries.

Croc hopes to whatever deity there is that Lynx doesn't turn out like Lion. The young man (the current youngest in the camp, at 21) in I-Unit was an absolute nightmare during his recruitment; the Sarge's told Croc that he had on multiple occasions refused to acknowledge the severity of his injuries during the more dangerous of training exercises, and even went as far as up and leaving the Medical Hut and going right back to his training. Even now, the Unit Medic has to literally sling the lad over his shoulder and carry him to all of his medical exams.

And as humorous as it can be to watch, it's significantly less funny when he's bleeding and injuring himself more by struggling in the arms of his teammates. They've almost lost the squirt on multiple occasions because of his lack of self-preservation.

Croc knows, though, that the withholding of important information such as his health can get Lynx into trouble with not only him, but the camp itself. The whole place would be breathing down his neck. From what he has seen so far from Lynx, the youth is a fairly quiet and likes his privacy.

He doubts the rookie will manage to get much privacy in a place like this, especially with that sort of time on the assault course! On his first try, he's managed to score an average speed among all the more veteran Units at BB. Croc has to wonder for a minute just what the old sods at MISO were teaching him, to have his stamina already so fitted with the rest of them.

Who knows, maybe they're finally doing something beneficial for real people, rather than themselves.

***linebreak whoop whoop***

Alex is cursing Ian Rider and all of his stupid training to high heavens right now. His overachieving uncle just had to make sure his nephew was fluent in so many languages, didn't he? Alex can't possibly believe that MI6 ever needed him to know all the things he does. Recently he's been wondering if his uncle just liked the bragging rights of having such a perfect little spy under his care.

Sitting a Spanish exam when he already knows the language like it's been ingrained into his brain with a scalpel, is one of the most boring and tense hours Alex thinks he's had to sit through. Worse than the time when Ian spent a few weeks teaching him about Politics. He was 8, he didn't care about politics, he just wanted to pull on girls' pigtails and roll around with his friends in the mud.

Even with all of his training it's a battle to keep him from jigging his knee up and down. His test booklet lays in front of him, closed, his pen crossed over the cover. Croc is sitting in the chair in front of him, also done and staring at the blackboard with a dazed out and thoughtful gaze. Alex wonders what the man's thinking about.

It's another two full minutes until the instructor finally decides to pick up the booklets, but instead of taking them back to his desk to mark them like Alex thought he would, he simply flips through them and reads out all of the mistakes and then the grade he gives it.

"I'd have thought that after a full two years in this block, Falcon, you'd have at least picked up how to conjugate the bloody verbs! Fail!"

"Where are all the accents, Bat? Are you as blind as your namesake? Fail!"

"Croc, I expect more from you! This is stilted and choppy! Not paying attention today, are you? Fail!"

Alex can't manage to bring himself to be as shocked at the harsh criticism as he wants to. It only makes sense that the stout, severe looking bespectacled man is as harsh in words as he is in looks. But, it doesn't quite stop the irrational anxiety of wondering if his own test is as good he wants to think it is.

Alex keeps his head tilted ever so slightly down as he lifts his paper in the air the way he'd seen the soldiers do it, out and waiting for the man's dark hands to snatch out of the air like he's some sort of predator. "The rookie! Hmph, you look barely old enough to know your own language fluently, let alone another. Should I prepare myself for a hideous lot of scribbles, hmm?"

Alex keeps his head down, and a taped finger makes its way into his teeth again as he sees the sour expression on the Instructor's face. If he could sink into his chair and disappear, he would, with all of the eyes burning into him heavily. But as it is, that would make him look like a kid, so he settles for biting down through the black tape and gnawing at the bone just in the crease of the pads of his fingers.

The instructor throws the booklet back onto Alex's bench with a tight expression, a loud and final, "Pass." leaving his mouth.

As the stares and glares bore through his skin, Alex bites down harder on his finger and tucks his head against his chest.

Alex wonders when MI6 will ever do something to benefit people, rather than their greedy selves. He's had enough of these situations to last him more than a lifetime.

He doesn't notice the startled eyes following the streak of blood running down his fingers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Thanks everyone for your great reviews and phenomenal support! Keep reading, it's hopefully gonna be (at least 1 I swear) 1 update every other month (I'm not trying to be mean, guys and gals and more, I just want to give you the good stuff and the good stuff takes time to write).**

 **If any of you have any suggestions on how I can improve both my writing and this fic, don't be shy, leave a comment. I know how to take a bit of constructive criticism, I have this superiority complex you see. At the least, I'd shape up just to throw it your face like 'see I did it, ha!'**

 **This is a short chappie of Alex's slightly deeper turmoils - we're slowly peeling the outer layers away, guys gals and kids - and next chapter: the Mess Hall at Lunch and Croc picks up on a certain habit of our boi's.**

 **Thanks!**

 **-tolbean**

 ***REWRITTEN WHOOOP**

At the very moment, Alex is feeling quite resigned to being pointed and stared at as he and the rest of B-Unit meat up again. The language lesson was awful, as if he was back at school; the teacher had no idea what to do with him. In all fairness, Alex doesn't know what to do with himself either, but he thinks it would have been nice if he was allowed to choose another language. He wouldn't have tagged along with Croc otherwise.

He knows they teach Arabic, and he's been looking to improve his skills in writing and reading since MI6's tutor for him 'mysteriously disappeared'.

It's almost sad, how little Alex worries of what had happened to the woman. But then again, she used to cane the back of his hands so maybe he's perfectly justified in not throwing himself into an investigation.

Also, she was a bitch.

Croc is tense and silent as he walks in front of the group, but Alex tries to pay him little attention as he can. He hopes Croc doesn't dig into his Spanish skills, as it is perfectly reasonable to be fluent in another language, especially in Special Forces. It's not so weird. That of course doesn't stop the looks from the other soldiers, nor the paranoia that clutches Alex's heart in a Hulk-like grip for the remainder of the lecture. He almost wonders if it's his bullet wound that is throbbing or the shell he'd wrapped around his new persona.

But he's doing fine, isn't he? He's not acting like Alex? No one has called bullshit just yet.

As they come up to their next rotation, Alex reminds himself that it's only been a few hours. Nothing could be up just yet, even his luck isn't that bad.

With this thought in mind, Alex keeps his head up whilst he works over Procedures with the Unit. He bounces on his toes like he knows Panther wants to do, but can't because he's 'too old', and he laughs with not much sound (because he's winded) but with a crinkle by his eyes when Bear uses him as 'The Civilian' and hauls him over the shoulder in a Firman's Lift.

When he finds that people have stopped staring with wariness, and more of an amused and bewildered gaze it almost makes up for the sharp sting in his bullet scar. Almost.

He doesn't let go of any of his own wariness, though. He has to catch himself before he chews through his fingers again, noticing that a bit of blood had clotted underneath the tape. He supposes he's coming across as an introvert to B-Unit - although he makes sure to regulate comments and behaviour that are quirked but prove that he's not a complete wacko - and he hopes that this can possibly give him a little time alone.

The next rotation is just a few laps around the lake. Alex thinks he's laid down enough foundations to build up comradeship - which is not friendship, because he can't have friends in this business - to allow him to run ahead of the group in silence on his own. More than enough acting has been already done that morning, and Alex revels in the hollowing serenity that settles over him as he pushes himself around the sludgy 'corners' of the lake.

He had lost his real character a long while ago, and not just the whole 'Regular Teen Boy' part, but his energy as well. You can't quite replace that spirit in you. Alex, himself, used to cram in all of these traits and personas and fake emotions so that he's nothing more than a book, his pages battered and ears dogged and the first chapters burnt out. No matter what craziness he tries to supply himself to fill the cavern of emptiness in him, he doesn't feel any more there. He just feels heavy. Like he's been weighted down over and over by an ocean, leaving him stuck at the bottom with the pressure squeezing down.

Won't be long before he runs out of air.


	6. Chapter 6

**Thanks so much for all of the wonderful tips! I'm going to keep an extra close eye on any spelling mistakes and slip ups, and I tend to write on my phone before editing it on my tablet so sometimes it just fudges up. (Not that I'm trying to make excuses, just so I can force you to empathise the cramps I get in my fingers when I knock out another chapter.)**

 ****REWRITTEN TO BE LESS BAD HAHA**

Alex tries to keep his body relaxed as Panther rushes and stumbles through more explanations and stories and little facts about Brecon Beacons, along with the training courses here. He nods in the right places, ask questions when Alex feels like he hasn't explained enough for 'Lynx' to file away, and just tries to keep up being someone else. He's trying to act normal, like he could fit in here, like he has the potential to be a good member of this Unit.

Alex isn't doing this to make himself feel included, but because Croc keeps looking at him with sharp eyes and Alex can't help but want to him to see him as opaquely as possible.

But Panther seems to be growing fond of him, and Bear seems constantly amused by his presence, and 2/3 really isn't that bad considering his shit track record.

Alex tunes in much more to what Panther is saying when they reach the Mess Hall. Partly, because he is talking about Alex. Mostly, to stop himself from searching the room again, even though he already knows all the exits and hazards and blind spots.

"I still think it's unfair that you didn't mess up the Obstacle Course. Every Rookie does, it's a bloody curse! I slipped in a great big pile of dog shite, Beary-boo-"

"The hell d'you just call me?"

"-face planted into the beams, and Leader over 'ere got his boot stuck in the net. Like - what the hell, Lynx, why d'you have to be so cool?!" Panther looks so put out with his arms waved up in the air like that, his eyes far too wide that Alex can't help but laugh.

But then Panther starts to ruffle his hair with chuckle of his own, saying, "Aww, did you guys hear that?!"

Then Alex realises that he didn't laugh, he giggled. Mortifying, much.

Alex purses his lips together with a dark look to Panther - who still had his hand in Alex's hair - and angrily swipes a tray from the rack, dodging his hands again. He wasn't planning on eating the awful lunch today, but decides not to risk it with Croc staring at him so intensely. It's almost creepy, but at the same time it's not - it's far too nerve-frying to be creepy.

The food selection isn't much to look at, just vaguely textured slop in three different colours. If Alex remembers correctly, one is some sort of meat...thing, another 'mashed' potatoes, and the last one is mushy peas or beans or sweetcorn or something along those lines.

The Dinner Lady scoops the substances onto the separated slants of the dinner tray, and as he walks by the cutlery table Alex grabs a cup of water as well. The fruit had been used up at breakfast, so he has no apple to nibble on to distract himself. Oh well. At least the potato is bland and edible enough.

Alex follows Bear as he walks over to the same table as breakfast, but his feet feel heavy all of a sudden when he notices that other than A-Unit, there are two other men - Instructors, Alex guesses from their uniform - sitting there with them. A stout Latino man with broad shoulders, and a taller male with silver-blond hair whom reminds Alex - presence wise - of Wolf. His breathing stutters for a moment as he takes them in (he feels like crying because more people means more work in keeping up his cover) but he quickly sorts himself out and sits between Bear and Croc, Panther squishing between Stag - the...techie? No, that's Raven; Stag is the sharpshooter - and Wasp(?) - the Unit leader and linguist.

There was already a buzz of jesting conversation and a playful nature around the table, and it only increases once B-Unit and Alex take their seats along the bench. He nods politely to the 4 men he had met in the morning, A-Unit, and shakes hands with the two men also chatting with them. Apparently, the Latino man - Guviea - and the other Instructor - Thompson - are the Instructors that oversee A-Unit and B-Unit's schedules and such. They seem decent, and Panther jokingly refers to them as 'Den Mothers' without being told off, so Alex assumes everyone gets on well enough. After a few hellos, he ducks his head and pushes his fork around the slop on his plate, starting to eat small forkfuls. It doesn't taste very nice - rather chalky and bland - but Alex appreciates the way it settles his stomach without rocking it too much.

As he's eating, Alex keeps his head down and ears open out for the conversation around him. The Mess Hall is loud, but not too much for him to handle. He's not a wuss.

"'Ey, Lynx, how's the slop treating you, Little Man?" Panther kicks at Alex's feet under the table to catch his attention. He tilts his head sideways at his plate, a small scowl on his face, and looks up to the man with a glare.

There is no way he could let Panther get away with that condescending nickname.

"First of all Panther; you ever call me 'Little Man' again I'll cut off your dick and shove it so far up your arse you're vomiting your own piss for days." The entire table chokes on whatever food they were eating.

"Second; it tastes like processed horse shit, thanks for asking. Now let me eat my damn lunch and fuck off." Alex spears another bit of potato slop, and shovels it in his mouth as he turns his head back down to his tray.

Stag can't quite seem to hold in his laughter, and surprised cackles shoot out of his red face. The rest of the table is soon to follow, and Bear even falls out of his seat. Alex suppresses a smile, his ears tinting red as the rest of the Hall turn to look at his table, but keeps his eyes glued to the slop he's eating.

Panther just keeps spluttering, and Alex wishes he could start laughing too.

"What the hell?! You're - you - no! I can't believe this! My innocent little Lynx!"

He keeps his mouth pressed into a line, but it's hard to fight off the grin. Alex had had practice, though, and it only makes Panther more flustered.

"Wha- Croc! Do something! I'm being bullied!" Panther wails again, hands slamming onto the table.

Croc wipes under his eyes and rights himself properly, a chuckle still bouncing in his chest. "Nah, this is the first time I've ever seen you speechless - it's great!" The Leader slings an arm over Alex's shoulders, as Panther once again splutters and the table finally collects itself.

The tender skin over his back is in bubbling, searing pain, and whilst everyone continues chatting again - this time, teasing Panther and poking fun - Alex tries to subtly move his arm for his cup of water, successfully dislodging Croc's arm from the sensitive areas of his wounded shoulder. He breaths out through his nose and grits his teeth as conversation goes back to normal, and pushes the food around his tray, suddenly not quite so hungry anymore.

He doesn't see it, but Croc stares at Alex oddly as he goes to put his tray in the racks with the other dirty ones. He nudges Bear as well, and both trade a slightly baffled look as Alex puts away a mostly untouched tray of food. Bear shrugs, and Croc frowns, wondering about wether or not it would be too soon or reckless to speak up about his worrying behaviour. The unit leader keeps his mouth closed as he sits back down though, Alex not noticing anything about the short exchange.

He just stares at the people around him and feigns interest, secretly wishing the day would just finish already so he could have some time to myself. Time to be Alex for a bit, not Lynx.

It's a shame he's not sure he's even the same Alex anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

**Thanks SOOO much for the feedback on the last chapter. So many of you gave your wonderful opinions on the POV change, and I think we'll all be happy with the decision I've come to: it'll be in 3rd person, but will revolve around Alex and his thoughts like usual.**

 **ALSO WTF THIS HAS LIKE 100 REVIEWS THANKS SO MUCH I LOVE YOU ALL**

 **And it's my birthday on the 9th of May, I'm turning 14! Yay!**

 **Tell me what you think about this chapter, please, and if you want me to include something you want to see happen at some point in the story feel free to leave a suggestion. I have a plot, but it's pretty open for anything you guys want to see. Just don't get too crackish, please!**

 **There's a little time skip here, and I know you guys probably wanted to finish the day in the way I was writing before but I really felt like this was best to help me jumpstart the plot and its progression.**

 **Also it was super fun to write it like this.**

 **Thanks! Review, follow and favourite, please (how about a nice juicy review - it can be my b-day prezzie? Hehehe)**

 **I LOVE U ALL TANKS SO MUCH**

 **-Isaac**

 **** JUST A LITTLE BIT EDITED TO BE BETTER ILYUGUYS STAY COOL**

Alex's eyes feel like they're stapled open. He can't for the life of him find the energy to close them.

He's been awake for so long that the sky outside is beginning to fade from navy to violet, and the birds still in their nests this time of year are starting to cheep. B-Unit are all sleeping, but Alex isn't.

He wants to. He needs to. But he can't.

Alex finds it hard to get to sleep, these days. It could be the pain of the burn on his right shoulder, because he has no medication for it. Maybe it is the anxiety of being quite deeply undercover for the foreseeable future. Or possibly it's because he doesn't want to suffer any gruesome nightmares again.

Maybe he is scared of having The Dreams, the ones were everything is just Red. Alex thinks he hates them more than the others.

Alex runs over the events of the day before in his head again. For what felt like the 100th time, and probably is.

Arrive, Breakfast, Assault Course, Languages, Lectures and Unit Exercises, Lunch. Tame, simple, easy.

After Lunch, it was the Hike. Alex had enjoyed the peace but hated the way the straps of his weighted bag had rubbed his injury. B-Unit were focused and quiet, wanting to get the worst part of the day (in their opinion, at least) over with. Alex on the other hand, thought was nice to have had a bit of time to his own thoughts.

Then they'd had some Gym time with A-Unit. Bear had wanted to spar with him, so he and Alex had spent the hour dodging each other's punches and forming splatters of bruises over each of their torsos. To Alex, it was the best part of the day. Bear was a great fighter, smart with wickedly fast fists. Alex was creative, well-trained and used to fighting big, bulky men (to near death, usually). It was quite evenly matched.

On the plus side to that, Alex now has a lot more of his Unit-mates respect and Bear seems much less intimidating, now that he knows the man becomes just as theatrical as Panther when he's injured.

From there, Alex had slipped into Lynx's character a bit more comfortably.

After the fight and before dinners, they had to sit down and re-strategise all of B-Unit's formation and procedures.

It was during this hour or so that Alex's had his undercover skills tested by the Unit.

***This is a mix between Alex's and Croc's POV but in 3rd person just fyi***

"Christ Lynx, you don't need to bother with shooting, you can just whip out your boney little elbow and the target would be done for. Ugh, Christ, my bloody ribs." Bear moans, shifting in his seat as his chest thrums with the pain of a fresh bruise.

Lynx smiles, just a little quirk of his lips as he shrugs with one shoulder. He doesn't reply, but the three men on chairs around him feel the little bit of pride in the compliment.

Croc watches him, eyes zeroed in on his movements for any sign of injury. Really he doesn't mean to be so coddling, but there's something about Lynx that seemed pained and just...vulnerable. Maybe it's because he's younger than them, quite obviously.

Croc had never taken any other soldier into his Unit so easily, and there had been quite a few. The title of B-Unit's 4th had been cursed since their Selection days. Most quit because they don't like them as people - either Panther too weird, Bear too blunt or Croc too scrutinising - and those are usually the people that don't last too long in the SAS. The one guy they'd ever even liked, their original 4th from when they were in Selection, had to leave because his sister was too irresponsible and bitchy and he had custody of her little girl (sometimes they meet up for coffee, when B-Unit are on leave, and the once-Rat usually brings his tiny niece. Seeing Tim and Sarah interact is always the best thing ever). No one has ever gotten on so well with them so fast. It's almost suspicious. Lynx seems too perfect for them that Croc just can't slip into the groove that Bear and Panther are in with him.

Looking to Lynx's face there is no pain, his body language is loose and relaxed, but it's something about the way he moves his arms that has Croc's Medic Senses tingling.

Couldn't for once they just have a regular man join their Unit? Is that really so much to ask for?

"Quit whining, Bear." Panther says with a hint of mischief in his lopsided smile. "But speaking of shooting..." The man whips around to Lynx, who suddenly has a (slightly petulant, not that Lynx would admit it) frown on his face. He'd been hoping he could avoid this conversation for as long as possible.

"What about it?" Lynx inquires.

Croc sits a little forward in his seat, his and Bear's paperwork forgotten on the rickety, stained table. This is the moment they've been working up to all day.

"Well, you're young for SAS, you've gotta admit." Lynx nods to Panthers statement, and the subtle inquiry about his age slips seemingly unnoticed.

"And as a Sharpshooter, usually you've gotta have years of experience with all sorts of guns." Bear joins in, and raises his eyebrows as he looks Lynx up and down, skeptically. "So, what I want to know, is how much you know. You can't be on this Unit if you're just gonna get us all killed."

Panther kicks Bear's chair with a little glare on his face. "What?" Bear exclaims. "We were all thinking it."

Panther looks as if he's about to reprimand the other soldier, he's got his Dad-Face on, but Lynx's soft and even voice cuts the tension left by Bear's too blunt statement.

"It's fine, really." Lynx says, seeming almost at ease, but there was a tenseness in him that he couldn't control and Croc couldn't help but notice.

Lynx takes a deep breath mentally, ready to spout off a bit of Alexei Gregory Smith's backstory. MI6 hadn't bothered to create one for him, so it is all in his hands to craft a believable and fitting history for 'Lynx'. But it isn't the first time Blunt and Jones have left him completely stranded like this, so Lynx is used to it.

"My family were either in the Army or '6, I grew up with a target on my head." At B-Unit's panicked faces, Lynx rushes to continue. "It's not like I've got a bounty on me, it was like a 'just in case' sort of thing. My Uncle taught me a lot about his side of The Job; he was SAS and MI6. Made sure I could defend myself."

Lynx's shoulders subconsciously tense, and his voice drops a bit of the 'story telling' tone when he talks about his Uncle. Croc sees it, and makes a note to himself to maybe ask the Sarge to look up - once he's gathered enough little hints, of course - about just how much of a prick Lynx's Uncle is to make him act so highly-strung.

"And then around a year ago, his undercover op went bad and they had to send in someone new." Lynx sighs, and rubs his thumb over his palm in calming circles. "The training was pretty...intense. The mission..." Lynx licks his teeth, trying to stop himself from getting too angry and straying from his pre-constructed backstory.

"Classified, but I can say it was much...harder than they'd lead me on to think."

Dark expressions litter across every face in the room. From what B-Unit have gathered from Lynx throughout the day, he definitely isn't one to complain. If he says his mission with MI6 was hard? They're not sure they really want to know what went down.

"There was a point when I was left without my long-rage stuff, and had to improvise." His smirk is a little bitter then, and B-Unit copied. They know just how gruesomely creative one has to be to get through the worser situations.

"So really, don't worry about me not having your backs on the field. Take my word for it. I'm a good shot." It isn't smug, there is no pride in Lynx's statement. Croc finds himself hurting, sympathising for him. Whatever this mission was, it had fucked him up. Croc makes a few notes to himself in his head to not be too much of an arse to him. He likes this one.

B-Unit unanimously decide that this is the soldier they aren't going drive away from them. Lynx doesn't have the expectation that the Unit was obligated to look out for him, as the newbie. But he still seems to understand that he is obligated to look out for them at all times. They can only return the favour once he's proved he's capable to stand on his own two feet.

Lynx seems ready to prove himself. It's admirable.

They accept his answer with little words, because it doesn't really need any to follow up with. Lynx has put a bit of trust in them by telling them about what they have no misconceptions was probably a very rough year, so in turn they put trust in his abilities. If only out of pity.

They work on their team strategies until Dinner. Lynx feels like he can let himself relax just a little bit, now that the first day was almost over.

(Croc had felt like Lynx's behaviour was finally explained, but when Lynx lifts his fork to eat his slop he's reminded of the bloody tape around the younger's fingers, and wonders if he even knows anything about Lynx at all.)

Review, follow, and favourite! Thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**OMG OKAY SO I KNOW ITS BEEN A WHILE AND IM SORRY BUT IVE HAD A LOT OF ISH GO DOWN LATELY ACK. BUT GOOD NEWS THO IM ALMOST ON MY SUMMER HOLIDAYS SO SOON THE UPDATES WILL BE A LITTLE MORE REGULAR.**

 ****EDITED A LIL BIT TO BE EXTRA GOODIE**

 **TIME SKIP AGAIN FORWARD TWO WEEKS**

"Lynx!" Croc shouts for Alex from across the Mess Hall, startling him out of pushing his breakfast around his plate. The bland porridge and the flavourless, slightly browned fruit are the only things Alex can eat for breakfast without upsetting his stomach. However, there was only yogurt, warm oatmeal, and hash browns out when Alex got to the Mess Hall. He'd woken up early again, and the rest of the food wasn't out. He was tempted to snatch one of the highly fought over hash browns, but the looks of betrayal from Panther would be a boy more than Alex could take so soon in the day.

"Yeah?" Alex says as his Unit Leader slinks around the other tables in long urgent strides, creases between his eyebrows and mouth set severely. "What's going on?" Alex asks quietly. He's never seen Croc look like this before. And B-Unit don't care anymore that Alex isn't there when they all start to get up in the morning - though they were quite panicked the first time he'd gone to breakfast early, according to their identically relieved faces once they'd found him - so what has Croc in such a state? Part of Alex isn't looking forward to finding out. Okay, a lot of Alex isn't looking forward to finding.

God, he's only been here two weeks and already there's shit going down.

Croc drops down into the seat in front of Alex, heavily and uncaring of the thudding sound that resonates from the bench. His arms fold across his chest, and even though Croc's hands are tucked away Alex can easily tell from the strain in the man's arms that his fists are tightly clenched. Alex really starts to worry, now. He goes through the last few days in his mind, and tries to see if Croc's sour mood is his fault.

"You've been here two weeks." Croc speaks after a tense moment of silence. His voice comes out slightly strained, and his jaw is set so tightly Alex thinks it must be painful. Alex nods slightly, uncertainty starting to creep in. What's going on?

"And your file still hasn't come through to us." Alex almost feels scared of Croc when he looks so angry. But just a few missing bits of missing background inforThe mation, after knowing he comes from '6, has never made Croc this irritated before. Sure, the man has made threats on dragging him off to the Medical Ward many times to interrogate him like a mini-RTI session, but usually he was half-joking, and it was when Alex was purposely stepping around all of their innocent questions.

Croc's eyes narrow at Alex's face, but the fury in them isn't directed at him. Instead, they're distant and burning. Alex wants to know what's going on - where is Panther and Bear? If something so important is going on, where's their Unit Supervisor? Where's A-Unit? As Croc tries to pry his grounding teeth apart to continue, Alex's brain is hurtling dizzying thoughts around his head.

"And we've been training with you for two weeks." Alex doesn't bother to nod and just stares at Croc, skin starting to tingle uncomfortably with traitorous anxiety.

"And you're injured."

Alex chokes, momentarily losing his cool and curses himself for it as Croc settles him with a satisfied look. Great. There's part of Alex's cover blown.

"I'm not-"

Bam! Croc slaps his hands down onto the table, apparently at the end of his rope, and Alex would be lying if he said he was so spy-awesome that he didn't flinch. In his defence, it sounds an awful lot like a skin on skin punch.

"Shut up, Lynx. Don't fucking lie to me." Croc's voice is monotone and his face still stony, but Alex could easily spot the disappointment and tiredness in it. It reminds him vaguely of his uncle, Ian. The very thought makes his stomach burn bitterly.

Alex keeps quiet. There's no point in saying anything about it now. He's going to have to come up with some bullshit excuses for when Croc eventually drags him to Medical. (Would they buy it if he says he's severely allergic to antiseptic? That worked on the ditzy school nurse, once.)

"And fucking SO wants us on a fucking dangerous rescue mission with you, right fucking now." Croc seethes out, and Alex is too busy not breathing to feel any offence over the way Croc spits his name with unparalleled frustration.

Alex feels so cheated right now. He'd for some reason believed MI6 when they said he'd have no more missions, but of course that was just wishful thinking - the SAS are England's Elite. Of course, of course, of course they'd be snatched away for the dangerous shit that was so heavy the government needed a whole group of elite arseholes to fix their messes.

How could he forget his own second mission - he'd nearly been hit by a train before the official mission even started, he was then actually hit by a train after snowboarding down a very rocky and tree-littered mountain on an ironing board because he was trying to escape being nearly dissected by a crazy scientist who wanted to clone him - did clone him - and launched a snowmobile at a helicopter and-

That's enough of that, actually. Alex doesn't even want to think about that mission. He still sees Julius every time he goes to sleep, and sometimes his reflection has a bloody hole in between his eyes.

"What?" Alex eventually gathers enough breath to choke out, and he tries failingly to slow his heartbeat because it's beating so hard in his chest it hurts.

Croc's anger seems to drain out of him like a deflated balloon, and his shoulders sink down as he pushes a hand through his short hair, mussing it up in different directions. He exhales slowly, and when he tilts his head back up to look into Alex's pale, stoney young face his lips smooth out from the hard line into a gentle downturn of his mouth.

Alex is almost afraid that Croc's going to apologise, and he would in turn have to come up with an awkward acceptance, when the man stands up. He looks disturbed to Alex, and when Alex turns his head to see what Croc's staring at he sees the Sargent by the door of the Mess Hall - holding a mission file, and two standard bullet proof vests.

Alex hadn't thought when Croc had said _now_ , he'd meant _now._


	9. Chapter 9

**IM BACK AT SCHOOL NOW I CRI AHHHHH**

 **GCSE's WHYYYYYYYY**

 **And oh I guess this answers someone's question about where I'm from. I'm from Surrey whoop whoop! I'm English**.

 **but how are u my frens. u all good? hydrated? fed? rested? Well u better be! (Pls look after yourselves I know school's haRD but you just gotta keep going strong)**

 **It's the moment you've been waiting for...**

 **MY PRECIOUS RUSSIAN IS HERE!eeeeeeEEEEEEP! IVE BEEN DEBATING WITH MYSELF HOW HE SHOULD BE INTRODUCED BUT THEN I GAVE BIRTH TO THIS GEM IN A DRAFT AND I JUST LURVE IT AHHH**

 **also**

 **Alex is so precious,, and and he's just. precious. He needs a hug. (Yassen. This is your que.)**

 **-ur main bro**

Alex wishes that the jittery feeling coiling around his body like barbed wire doesn't relax him. Biologically, adrenaline should be doing the opposite, getting him tense and ready for this fuckpot of all missions B-Unit had been slapped with with literally an hour or two's notice. But, Alex is used to this feeling. It's always pumping around him just a little bit, always making his muscles strain and his senses hurt but Alex is used to this feeling of always being ready for shit to go down that he feels ever so slightly more prepared for this mission.

Slightly.

Because no one is really that excited to be thrown into a hostage situation for a man, unnamed and faceless in Croc's brief, that apparently had a favour owed to him by Her Majesty. Whatever he'd done to swing that deal, Alex is sure must be a great story. It's no wonder these... Americans, are they? Yes, probably. It's no wonder these American mercenaries had kidnapped him. Alex is certain that from the only scrap of info that they've got, that the ransom for whoever this bastard is (that had the Queen demanding him rescued by 'The best the British have to offer!'), is most likely extremely high.

And because Alex is a horrible person, he wishes that someone would just pay the ransom instead. Save them a messy job. Because of course, it's just as his burnt shoulder starts to hurt less and his bruises fade to yellow that he's got to go on a dangerous mission with a Unit he's never worked with in the field before.

Well, at least he gets (the best!) guns this time, right?

"Lynx. Get out." It's just a bit of whispery static in his ear, but Alex is immediately on knifes edge and screaming internally. Nothing comes through the comms after that. Alex is dreading moving from his perfectly angled (his maths teacher would be shocked!) and secluded spot to go after B-Unit. (Because there is no way he's just up and leaving them when he's perfectly capable of kicking these Yankee's arse's.)

As soon as they'd been dropped down in the remote, dense forests of...whatever hovel their hostage had been dragged to, Alex had been sent to set his scope on their planned escape entrance, and keep a report going of everything going on in his birds-eye view.

Basically, he'd been sent out of the way.

With an exasperated and slightly hysterical huff, Alex disassembles and folds his gun up into its case. He'll leave it here as he infiltrates the industrial-looking building that B-Unit had managed to get themselves trapped in.

Because of course, the American mercenaries know they're here. And of course, B-Unit are being held with the hostage.

And of course, Alex has to pull an impossible stunt to rescue them all.

Really, Alex thinks to himself as he pulls his standard handgun out of its holster. He should've expected it would end like this.

****linebreak whoop*****

When Croc had woken up that morning to their Unit Supervisor practically ripping the door off its hinges to get inside their hut, it was a pretty big clue as to how the rest of his day was gonna go.

Even he didn't expect it to be quite so bad. A mission with no prep? That just never happened.

Well, it has now. Or more accurately, is happening, because Croc is currently being chucked unmercifully into a cell along with the rest of his Unit - bar Lynx, because there is no way in any layer of Hell that Croc is going to put an injured rookie in the field.

This. This is why they never get missions without prep.

He sits stunned, slumped against the wall and checking his face to see if his nose is broken. It's not. It just hurts like it is.

"I don't suppose this is part of your genius rescue plan?" A perfect English accent, the kind that Croc only hears on TV or in movies, drawls from the corner of the room. Croc doesn't jump, but he tenses, and he clearly hears Panther's yelp of surprise. He'd been leaning against the wall just a foot away from the man and never noticed him, after all.

Croc sizes him up. Trim, dancers build (reminded him almost of Lynx, except Lynx was a little more bony), with white-blonde hair, shocking blue eyes and pale skin. His presence and muscles make him seem taller than he probably is, so Croc estimates he's between 5'9 - again, around Lynx's height - and 6'0.

Making a pretty easy inference, Croc deducts that this is the supposedly helpless hostage. Croc thinks the man could probably get himself out if he really wants to, and that there really is no reason for B-Unit to be there so urgently, and-

Oh. Right. The Queen. The man knew the Queen, personally. Of course they need to pitch in. The Queen had asked them to. You can't say no to the Queen.

"I don't suppose you'd believe us if we said yes?" He answers back, and the man chuckles silently. For a hostage, he looks fairly at ease.

Bear groans as he stretches his arms out, popping his shoulders to soothe the unpleasant ache in them. Panther flops over his legs, using them as a pillow. Croc just stares around the cell, noticing the cliché prison bars and the drab stone walls. The man offers a half-drunken bottle of water to him, and Croc uses a few capfuls to clean the blood off his face, considerate that this is possibly their only bottle. He almost chokes on a sip when he hears gunshots down the hall.

Lynx. Shit.

"Shit, is that Lynx?!" Panther nearly squeaks out, bursting upright and standing stupidly close to the bars of the cell. Bear pulls him back, but Croc knows that they all want to stick their heads out and see if the little arsehole is really stupid enough to try and take down the 14 fully grown mercenaries that had kicked all of their arse's.

Panther looks like he might cry when everything goes silent.

Lynx reminds Panther of his son, Jessie. They've all talked about this before. Panther's paternal instincts telling him something is severely wrong with Lynx, the rest of them telling him not to pry, that sort of thing.

Jessie is only 6 and Lynx has to be... How old? Croc doesn't even want to think about it. It makes him feel queasy.

There are slow footsteps then, a bit of heavy breathing, and even the man falls quiet, understanding this would either reveal that their other Unit member is dead or had managed to take down all of the American thugs - which is unlikely.

But despite his fear and dread that he'd have to go back to camp, tell A-Unit that they'd lost 'Little Lynx'. That he'd have to tell the kid's family that they'd lost their little spy protégé, or whatever he was. They'd barely known him, and-

No fucking way.

"So," with blood running from a worryingly deep cut in his hairline, a dark red bruise on his cheek, and something haunted in his cheeky grin, Lynx twirls some cliché keys in his hand. They were clinking, large, and on a ring. "We going now, or what?"

Panther whoops, Bear grins, Croc stares because he can't do anything much more than that, and Lynx looks almost flushed at their cheering. And also, a bit dizzy.

In the darker corner of the cell, Yassen recognises his Little Alex - older, taller, thinner, more bruised, more broken, and _different_ \- and his fists clench. Alex is in pain. It made Yassen furious. Guilty. Regretful.

MI6 would pay for ever having anything to do with Hunter's boy. Really, they should've better, should've known that Yassen would come for them eventually. Yassen won't let them hurt Alex Rider, or whoever he's pretending to be now, anymore. Alan Blunt is going to pay for his crimes.

Yassen would make sure of it.

 **Ayyyy,, be sure to drop a review my frens it will be much appreciated.**

 **ILYSM**


	10. Chapter 10

**Yoyoyo,, I still feel motivated from last chappie so Ima try and give you guys a faster update. I know you waited for ages last time bc I had trips and exams and drama and stuff,, so thanks for not completely giving up on me.**

 **I love you!1!1!1!1!**

 **And so here, the moment I've been building up to;**

 **Alex sees Yassen again after years, and of course, his 'Lynx' cover gets a lil bit blown here. But probs not in the way you're thinking.**

 **Also I see some of you are curious as to Yassen knowing the Queen. Really, I was thinking up ways that Yassen could be not,, like,, arrested/sniped on sight (and believable ways, not like he was secretly '6 the whole time or he was just let go like nah fam),, and this came to me. And I'll tell you now, bc overall it's not too important:: he was snoopin around Scorpias old files, found a plan to hide a bomb in the floor under a super important meeting the Queen had with another world leader, and was like 'oh shit, I gotta pull a Rider' and like, stormed into the room, but before anyone could even do anything he like threw away the loose tile that was covering the bomb, and cut it all dramatic n Mission Impossible like.**

 **And even after being told no by her advisors, the Queen gave him a Royal Pardon for his old crimes and shit bc Yassen is just that charming haha, and also bc like he saved two members of royalty lol, and gave him connections to set up a new identity under Witness Protection (bc Liz is one tough gal and she does not care what u think susan shut up and get her some muthafukin doggies to pet)**

 **They have tea parties, like fancy tea and stuff. Bc Yassen would so do that, and so would the Queen.**

 **But yah.**

 **Anyway, here's the chappie. Alex finally slips up.**

 **Considering how shit he was at undercoverness in book 1, I like to think 2 weeks is pretty decent for him.**

 **Great job. Gold star. U tried.**

 **-tolboi haha jk tolbean**

"Lynx!" Alex leans back on instinct when Panther thrusts an arm out of the bars, but walks to him once he realises the older man is waving him over. It takes him a few seconds, embarrassingly. Alex hopes his mild concussion isn't worse than he likes to think it is. That would just be inconvenient and totally his luck.

His cheek feels a little crusty with the drying blood on it, and the other is throbbing dully with pain. He's certain that he's pulled at the scabs over his burn, and that the blood is leaking down his back, but it's all fairly easy to hide.

He's not even sure why he's still bothering to hide it, now that Croc already knows about his old injury (vaguely, but he still knows) and they're all doubtlessly going to be flown straight to the nearest Hospital, but...Habits, Alex supposes.

Panther grips Alex's arm tightly, warmly, when he gets close enough, leaving Alex's other arm free to shuffle through all the stupid cliché keys for the right one. "Lynx, you fucking idiot," he says, but he's also grinning so wide Alex doesn't really know what to do. "You-you've- there were 14 of them and you're, like, shit, what?" Alex doesn't know what he's asking, he's too busy turning the key in the lock. When the gate is pulled back, arms are immediately around each side of his waist, but Alex grips the biceps of the two holding him before they sling his arms around their shoulders. That would be agony.

Croc's ranting at him on his left, fortunately too determined on getting them all out of there and back to the chopper to actually try and give him a physical right there and then. Alex can't believe they're all so angry at him for rescuing them, but he supposes that it might really just be them expressing their concern. They'd probably thought he was going to die. To be fair, so did Alex, but it's not a new feeling. Besides, he's not afraid of it anymore.

Alex is almost immediately aware that their hostage is lurking behind them, but he doesn't think much about it. He'd acknowledged that there was another person with B-Unit in that cell, but he hadn't really felt it prudent to give the person any attention. He gets curious when they're actually standing - or in Alex's case, laid down in the grass like he's broken both his legs - at their pick-up point. His brain feels a lot slower than it had earlier, because he doesn't quite remember how he got to be laying down, but whatever. The grass is slightly wet and some coldness bleeds through his shirt, and it's soothing on his burn.

He squints against the dim sun in his eyes, turning his head to look at the three men sitting down beside him. Panther is standing, talking with their pilot about their situation in Techie-Army-jargon, and Alex is too exhausted to decipher any of it. Croc berates him almost immediately when he sees him move, going on at him about head injuries and what not, but Alex is too busy staring slack-jawed and disbelieving at Yassen fucking Gregorovitch.

"-Lynx!" Croc slides his hands behind Alex's ears, trying to look at his pupils and keep him still, but freezes when Alex flinches. Badly.

"Ya-..." Alex swallows through the dryness of his throat, which suddenly feels tight and soar and choked, and his fingers twitch in the man's direction. He blinks hard enough to make his head start throbbing, but when he opens his eyes Yassen is still there and still breathing.

Fuck, he hopes he's not hallucinating this. He doesn't think he's hit his head hard enough to be seeing dead people yet.

Croc registers just what - who - he's staring at quickly, and is quite obviously a little baffled. But he doesn't object when Yassen slowly moves by Alex's side with a mumbled, "He knows me, it's okay," and even stands up to check on Panther. Bear lurks near them but not too close, just far enough from them to see if Alex is still breathing. He can't hear them, because though the field is quiet, the tension in the air is too loud.

Yassen's hands - calloused, warm, gentle, familiar - cradle the sides of his head like he's supporting a baby's neck. Alex keeps blinking at him, lost and exhausted and tearful, and the dead man pulls one of his preciously rare minute smiles for him. "You know me, little Alex." He can't tell if it's Russian or English the man is murmuring to him in; the foreign feeling of fingers brushing comfortingly through his hair and the pain in his head screwing up his senses. "I'm here. I'm not going to hurt you, Alex."

Alex shuts his eyes, his whole body shaking. This is Yassen.

Yassen wanted him to live a normal life, Yassen killed Ian, Yassen saved him, Yassen almost killed him, Yassen loved him, Yassen died, and it was Alex's fault, and-

"You're dead." Alex mumbles, hysterical in his pain and shock. He says it in a whisper, over and over and over and over until Yassen takes Alex's hand - smaller and more delicate than his, but just as calloused - and holds it over his chest, his heart. It thumps steadily, strong and real, warming his fingertips.

"No. I'm not. I'm here." He repeats it when Alex scrunches his face in denial, staring down at him neutrally with icy blue eyes that are cracking with warmth and...

Alex tries to sit up, to check for - something, anything, nothing, whatever - but Yassen's fingers spread across his chest, pushing down firmly. "No, little Alex, lie down."

And Alex wants to laugh, because he is being cradled and coddled by a not-dead assassin, and everything feels fuzzy except the hand still cradling his head. He feels every ridge and pad of Yassen's fingers with crystal clarity.

Alex's hand, still over Yassen's chest, grips onto his shirt tightly. Like a toddler fisting his fragile little fingers in his parent's shirt. He doesn't say anything else, but he hopes Yassen understands his message. Stay.

The chopping breeze of a helicopter pulses through the grass in time with Alex's pulsing head, and the loud motor increasing in volume makes him bite down on his teeth. Yassen rubs a thumb into his jaw to ease the tension, to make sure Alex doesn't crack his gums wide open. Alex thinks he's saying something to him, either 'I'm sorry,' or 'Don't be sorry,'. He wants to tell Yassen that he can't hear him, but Alex is too disgruntled by the helicopter and the fuss that he he can't pull his lips apart and unlock his teeth.

Then there's a lot of shouting and codes and stress, and Yassen and Croc are shifting him onto one of those air-lift stretchers, verbally throwing his pain around in words above him like 'concussion' and 'blood loss' and much longer sentences in medical terms that Alex didn't learn in biology at school.

The noise and excitement keeps him awake, along with Yassen's (he's here and he's sorry, he's said, and he's not going to hurt him or die, he's said, and Alex doesn't know wether to put hope in any of it) hand still cradling his head. His forefinger and thumb massage away the tightness at the top of his neck, and it's too good to fall asleep to.

Sometimes he feels other hands (in gloves), wiping wet and cold things on his face to clean the blood and dried sweat, and fingers and lights around his eyes, but Alex squirms when they reach to check his pulse on his neck. They use his wrist instead.

Then things become more disjointed, and Alex is completely out of it, but he's aware - right until he feels a sterile-smelling mask settle over his mouth and nose - always of Yassen.

He feels alive, even as he blacks out, because he has something. He didn't have anything before - no parents, no friends, no Jack, no Tom, no Ian, no control - but now he's got Yassen.

It's more than good enough for him.

Yassen finds it painful, staring at the 14 year old boy laying dazed in the long grass, head propped uncomfortably on his bullet proof jacket. He knew the child was out of it - a nasty head injury, most likely from the butt of a handgun to his temple - when the leader of the unit was able to remove the thing from Alex without protest. Even as he was being laid down he seemed only sweetly disgruntled, mind not connecting properly to what's going on.

And then there is the fact that Alex hasn't seen him yet. Yassen is anxious for both what that says about his head injury, and his reaction to seeing a dead man. A dead man that he'd watched die.

He doesn't have the highest hopes, but Alex has always managed to surprise him, so he isn't completely ruling out the option that the child won't try to shoot him on sight. With how little friends his Alex has - or anyone, really - Yassen knows that it could either be a reasonably happy reunion, or no reunion at all.

But Yassen had been in the hospital room with John and Helen, standing awkwardly near a nurse as Alex was born, and he will never in his lifetime forget how it felt to have little pink wormy fingers brush his chest and get caught in his shirt. Even if Alex ends up a psychotic killer hell-bent on murdering him, Yassen will never be able to bring a glassy, frozen sheen to the maple-brown eyes that he'd watched darken from baby-blues. Yassen will not spill a child's blood, and would pour out his own before any could fall from Alex.

Yassen will never kill Alex Rider. He will not fail the child again.

He finally catches Alex's eyes, fuzzy and softer in their pain and slight delirium, and almost holds his breath. Alex's mouth falls open, and his tired eye lids move apart as much as they can in their heaviness, and Yassen nearly smiles. It's a precious expression, childish, and Alex should like this more. Always.

But the boy moves around too much, jostles his head against the jacket, slips his skull into the grass instead and the leader - probably the one with most medical training - rushes to steady his head.

Lynx.

Yassen thinks Cub had suited him more, because Alex is young, and Lynx is too...old.

John would be furious.

"Ya-..." He hears a weak mumble come from Alex, and the little spy looks like he's going to try and move over to him, so Yassen saves the boy the trouble and comes to crouch by him.

"It's okay," he says as the soldier - just about taller than him, handsome and athletic and a little bruised like the rest of his unit - shifts his body in front of Alex, even if he's realised they both know each other. "He knows me," Yassen looks pointedly at the brown eyes blinking hard at him. The man shifts around so Yassen can kneel beside him, but doesn't leave them until Yassen cradles Alex's head softly to push the hard edge of his jacket away, and to keep dirt out of any cut on his head. "It's okay." He repeats, looking directly into the man's eyes - an odd shade of green - until the man moves to see how much longer their ride is going to take.

Alex looks confused at him when he speaks it in English, so he switches to his mother tongue on a whim and hopes it brings him a reaction. "You know me, little Alex." There's a spark there. Alex, the poor child, is in a state of tired hysteria and Yassen finds him self soothing the child in Russian. It's a pleasant surprise - he feels unrightfully proud - when Alex talks back to him in Russian. The syllables are slurred because of his currently slow thought process, but the accent sounds just like Yassen's and it's wonderful.

Because Alex is leaning into his hands, even if he's denying his existence, he seems to be taking it alright enough that Yassen brings the child's hand to rest over his chest. He needs to calm him down, but also Alex's hand feels just as delicate and small against his heart as when it was newborn and soft. He finds himself smiling, wider than he has since he'd made a new and clean identity for himself, and feels oddly emotional when the boy doesn't let his shirt go. Alex's chest feels hard with both muscle and bone under his own hands, and that makes him frustrated, but it's something he'll fix soon.

Alex might be mortified if he ever finds out how out of it he is as they fly to the closest available place for immediate medical attention, especially seeing as he lets his Italian teammate - whom Yassen deduces must have children - pat his forehead with a cloth and doesn't protest as the more muscled man of the whole group keeps his fingers over his pulse-point the whole trip.

"How do you know Lynx?" The leader talks into his ear over the bustle and whirring noises, and Yassen briefly thinks on trying to guess and keep up Alex's cover. But he needs the real Alex back because he's selfish and wants to finally fill his desire of looking after John and Helen's baby boy, and so he doesn't pause much in his answer.

"I was good friends with his father." Yassen has to raise his voice into the man's ear, because neither of them had bothered putting on the heavy headset. They'd just stuffed some plugs into their ears to stop any damage. They can still hear quite a lot of noise, though, but at least it won't make them go deaf. Yassen doesn't mind it. So far, these men had proved great competence in looking after his Alex. They're already in his good books.

The man doesn't ask much more questions for the sake of professionalism, but when they finally get to the readily waiting paramedics in front of a private hospital (and after Alex is rushed out of sight), Yassen answers the question he knows the man is thinking - and had been for a while - when he is left in Yassen's overnight room with the beginnings of a report. The man says that Yassen could call him Croc, because that is the name the SAS gave him. Yassen introduces himself as just Yassen, and there is of course no recognition, so he carries on without pause.

"He thought I was dead." He says to Croc as the man aims another heavy gaze to the door of Yassen's temporary room. He is only going to sleep for 6-8 hours in here, with an IV pumping him nutrients to give him back some energy, but for now he has to stay separate from Alex while the doctors do their jobs.

Croc doesn't startle, nor does he look too surprised, and in Yassen's good book he moves up a few people. "Why?" Is all the man says, as he seats himself into a reasonably comfortable chair, putting his half-done report at the foot of Yassen's bed.

Yassen looks away, to the door of his room. It hurts sometimes to think about how much trouble he'd managed to cause for Alex, how derailed his plan had gone; to fake his death thoroughly and collect Hunter's son and keep him safe. He ended up doing the opposite, and it makes him feel heavy.

"He saw a bullet go through my chest." He says quietly, mindful not to say it too loud to be blunt, or too quiet to be meek, and to the man's ever growing credit; Croc just nods.

Yassen shuts his eyes and pretends to sleep for 47 minutes before he trusts that Croc isn't going to harm in his rest, and then drifts off.

He thinks of Alex as he falls into slumber, and dreams pleasantly of baby fists wrapped around his fingers, of soft downy strings of blonde hair brushing the crook of his arm, and of a little smile he will kill to see once again.

 **I am so fucking proud of this chappie, guys. Pls review. Tank tank. Hope you liked it!**


	11. Chapter 11

**I'm just in a mood for this story oml aren't you guys so lucky this stuff is actually getting not-shit**

 **Also I have found out I am a natural on a quad bike whoop whoop.**

 **Here be the chapter where shit goes down, and we all know that Yassen's gonna flip his shit over the scorpion tattoo that I mentioned like once before but is actually important I swear.**

 **So.**

 **Also for some reason I'm finding myself low-key shipping Yassen and Croc? like idk why but tell me if you want me to put that in the epilogue (which is gonna be so much later, but like I said before this is a gen fic soooooo)**

 **Pls,, I know I sound needy af but pls REVIEW I love you guys so much.**

 **** I've reposted the entire thing again, fresh, but with edited chapters. I'm sad to loose all of my stats, but if you guys could just re-read and tell me what you think? That's why this chappie has taken so long. Go click back and read!****

Alex wakes up with everything feeling a little bit fuzzy and light. The beeping and whooshing machines are all muffled, the room is a bit too bright as he squints his eyes open, and he feels chilly from the air conditioning.

It also doesn't take him too long to realise he's probably been drugged beyond what a 14 year old should ever be allowed. (He feels too floaty.)

"Lynx? Kid?" A heavy, warm hand splays across the middle of his chest, and Alex blinks slowly. He squints, and scrunches his eyebrows to focus his swimming vision, and finally makes out Croc's face after much intense concentration.

"Croc." Alex says, happy with himself that at least he isn't too doped to see straight.

"Yeah, Lynx. You good?" Croc sounds a little tense, and Alex winces. He bets the man's angry as fuck - he can feel the thick dressing and bandages under his gown.

"Croc," Alex mumbles, tossing his head back onto his fluffed pillow, pouting slightly at the ceiling. Croc leans forward, worried, until Alex groans suddenly and loudly-

"I'm really fucking high."

A lot of laughs make the room feel a lot warmer, and Alex starts a little because he hadn't realised there are more people in here. Now that he's listening properly, he can distinguish Panther's hysterical hiccuping and Bear's deep chuckles.

Croc sighs, drops his head to hide his relieved smirk, and his hand rubs comfortingly across Alex's chest. "Good for you."

Alex grins a little bit, his teeth poking out of his crookedly open lips, and he doesn't know why he's smiling. He thinks it's because he's loopy and can't handle his meds.

"Croc, it's better to just ask him now," someone says, Alex doesn't see who. He'd already turned his attention to his side to look at the figure leaning against the wall. Alex thinks he must be really doped up because he sees Yassen smile a little at him from the corner of his mouth, looking thoroughly entertained. His jaw drops open.

Yassen's smile grows so uncharacteristically wide that the man coughs a little into his hand to hide it. Alex bats away the hand trying to tilt his head back, and stares harder at Yassen.

"You fuckshit." Alex moans at Yassen, lips pulled back in a half-grimace/half-snarl. Yassen holds his hands up innocently, but his sly expression proves just how truthful that is.

"Language." The man says, mockingly. Even with his filtered vision, Alex can see the glint in his blue eyes from here. He huffs a raspy chuckle, disbelieving that this is what the man says to him when he's supposed to be DEAD. It sharply turns into yelp when a finger pokes him in the side of the neck. His ear immediately jumps to press against he shoulder, and Alex whines at Croc because his fingers are cold.

"What the FUCK-" The Medic shouts at Alex, cheeks red, and he screws his eyes shut to stop the hallucinations of Ian. That angry face looks so similar it makes his heart feel sick. "Were you doing?! Running after us like that! Disobeying my orders! What the hell were you thinking, Lynx?!"

Alex swallows, shying away from Croc's voice. He thinks he might have accidentally sealed his eyes shut forever, because he doesn't really remember how to open them again. It seems like too much effort, anyway.

"That you were all going to die!" He shouts straight back defensively, and then chokes on the bitterness the truth left on his tongue.

There's a long stretch of silence after that. Alex doesn't think Croc take a single breath in all of it. He continues, quietly and not exactly consciously, "I didn't want it to be my fault."

Red flashes before Alex's eyes, red fire and red blood and red hair. Someone has the gaul to put a hand on his forehead and swipe away the fake-black strands that had tumbled and stuck down on it, making a generic soothing noise over all of the silence and Alex goes still. Only one person would be so disregarding of Alex's boundaries, so uncaring of anyone else's reactions.

"...again." He whispers, the words spinning uncontrollably out of his mouth, and the thumb that had been smoothing out the creases in his eyebrows freezes. And then the sound of a chair being dragged hits his seemingly cotton stuffed ears, and Alex practically sinks into his hospital bed when those familiarly calloused hands closes around one of his slightly possessively.

"Never." Replies Yassen, and Alex hums a little at his voice, because his face is too slack and unfamiliar with the concept to smile. He thinks it's funny that the man has finally lost any trace of the subtle accent Alex used to barely hear. He sounds proper and English and it's funny, for some reason Alex doesn't really know. Probably the meds.

"Shit." Panther groans, gravel in his throat. "That's...that's-" he doesn't know how to finish, obviously, because his sentence trails off. Bear decides to lend a hand.

"Extremely worrying?"

Alex makes an agitated sound in the back of his throat, and Bear rightfully takes it as the argument it is. "Don't you fucking deny that your shitty self-preservation doesn't make me want to piss myself, Lynx, don't you fucking dare!"

Alex thinks the man's standing up now, probably wildly gesturing and looking scary. He's used to scary, though. He doesn't respond. Yassen's hands tighten further at his stillness.

The room's quiet then. Alex can hear someone speaking lowly with someone else - probably Panther to Bear, calming him down - but mostly, everything is quiet.

Alex is about to fall asleep, throwing his other arm loosely across his stomach when Yassen's hands suddenly go slack around his. It startles him enough that he instinctually opens his eyes, and immediately wishes he didn't.

Yassen is staring, horrified, at the scorpion tattoo on Alex's wrist. It's a little obscured by the wires and needles in it, but easy to make out. Alex winces when the ex-assassin's fingers run over the curve of the tail.

"What the fuck is this?" Yassen asks him in Russian. Lazily, wary, Alex responds in English. "Blunt thought it would be a good reminder." He whispers hoarsely. His throat feels like bloody sandpaper. A moment later, the plastic lip of a cup is pressed against his mouth. He swallows the water gratefully.

"Reminder of what?" Yassen whispers back to him, in English like Alex, and leaning close to Alex's face so they can hear each other and no one else in the room could. Alex doesn't look at him, but if he did, Alex thinks Yassen would probably look furious.

(In actual fact, Yassen is looking pale and feeling dread and guilt. He can guess exactly what a scorpion tattoo is supposed to be a reminder of.)

"Pfft, I don't know...Of what it was like there. How I could have it worse." Alex mumbles, eyes far away and staring up at the ceiling. He wonders if he'd be this truthful if he weren't pumped full of drugs. "How Blunt could make it worse." He adds on absentmindedly, eyes trailing along the lines and tiles above him.

He can hear Yassen's audible intake of breath, but no exhale. He shuts his eyes, sated, as the Russian presses his palm against his forehead. He's already asleep as Yassen walks out of the room.

"This is Her Majesties Secret Service, who is-"

"It's Gregorovitch." Yassen cuts in with a whisper, not wanting the soldiers standing on the other side of the door to overhear, staring angrily into nothing whilst his mind cannot rip the image of the brand on Hunter's boy's arm.

Things are going to change. They have to. He cannot allow things to go on the way they are.

"I'm calling in my favour."

[ **NeXt chapter will be the team finding all about Alex's med history lol good luck. Yassen's gonna be pissed]**

 **aNNND REVIEW::**


	12. Chapter 12

**IM BACK AND I HOPE U ALL HAD HAPPY HOLIDAYS !**

 **I was stuttering over this chapter for a bit,, sorry. But this is the big reveal !**

 **Here we go- PLEASE REVIEW I LOVE READING THEM SO MUCH THEY MAKE ME SO HAPPY AHHHHHHH**

Alex is discharged a few days later, and it's Instructor Thompson - who _only_ gives him a _mild_ scolding, what a pleasant surprise - that's present to help him (unnecessarily) into the helicopter on the roof of the building. B-Unit had been flown back after they'd gotten to see Alex wake up, and Yassen had been taken with them. He'd left Alex with a warning look and a significant squint towards the bandages under his gown - thankfully obscuring his 'mysterious injuries' from view - and Alex had been half relieved but secretly displeased.

He's grown to like B-Unit over his stay at BB; Bear is straightforward and assertive and protective, Panther makes Alex feel included in literally everything they do as a team and Croc-...

Alex can describe Croc in many different ways, but none of them seem to be sufficient enough. He's smart, scarily observant and softly dangerous - which is quite an odd phrase, but Croc always seems neutral and outwardly content, though Alex has seen him in the firing range. He's lethal. Calm, collected, sharp and efficient.

Alex supposes that he's the other side of the coin to his Uncle. The less...rusted side. Ian shared many of Croc's traits, though the distinct difference is that Croc's morals put others before himself, and he possesses this awfully keen sense of empathy that Alex can only wish his Uncle had owned.

Maybe, if Ian had been kind, it would be easier to miss him ( _because everyone expects Alex to do that_ _so_ _he_ _tries_ _but_ _sometimes he thinks Ian was just wrong. In the head_. _Unbalanced, not well, not fully aware_. _Like an empty shell_ ). But Ian's sympathies and good graces had probably been drained out of him the moment his brother and his wife were bombed out of the sky, leaving him with a small child he had no idea what to do with.

Croc is more like Yassen than Ian, though. Still a very dangerous mix with sentiments to it that Alex doesn't really want to acknowledge, because if Croc is more like Yassen then Alex has to think about what Yassen is like compared to his Uncle and that just feels wrong. For more reasons than one.

Alex considers himself lucky that his doctors weren't willing to send Croc off with a medical report. There was a lot of fuss over each of them and their own injuries, too, so all B-Unit really know is that his shoulder is injured, and that he's got a nasty head wound and a smarting bruise smearing most of his lower leg blue.

He's feeling much better, the absence of a headache and some proper sleep making him a bit less apathetic than usual, bruises faded to a combination of greens and yellows and blues and his burn finally knitting over properly with the help of a salve that Alex loathes to apply to himself. His body aches too much to bend like that, but he can't possibly ask anyone else to assist. The mortification would be too much.

He feels a little odd in these clothes that Thompson had brought him that morning; the grey SAS sweats and softly-lined boots are items specially doled out to injured/ill soldiers. It's a stark difference from their usual uniform, and Alex feels like he's walking around in pyjamas and he's unsure wether or not he likes how soft they are or dislikes how harsh they're going to make his regular clothes feel. They're a bit boxy on Alex, the sweatshirt cuffs falling to the middle crease in his palms and the hemline resting just under his hip bones. The bottoms cling low on his narrow waist, the drawstring tied as tightly as Alex could, and they fall very straight because of this. They go all the way down to hug their cuffs at his heels. He has them tucked into his thick socks.

Alex feels very young in them, just like any average teenager borrowing a jumper and bottoms from an older brother or dad or whoever that's just a few inches taller and wider than they are.

It doesn't take too long to fly back to Wales, but he thinks the pilot and co-pilot are being deliberately smooth and slow because - as one of his nurses had informed him as he had been getting ready to leave - he looks very 'precious' all bruised and young in his army sweats. Thompson (who's chatting lightly in the back with him) encourages him to try and rest, but Alex has been sleeping more in the last four days than he has in the last four weeks, so he watches the fields and skies as they fly past instead. When he can see them coming close to camp Alex tugs his beret on over his fluffy, sleep-downy hair and tries not to pout as B-Unit's Instructor smirks at him with an amused look that says 'you're trying to look serious but really you're just being adorable'.

The Sargent and a man in a pressed suit are waiting in the air field as they land, and Alex has a brief panic that he's about to be taken back to MI6, but the panic is immediately abated because both men look too content and mild. As they fly closer, Alex sees the stark white hat held under the man's arms and the badges and pins laid across his breast, and calms down much more.

When he jumps out of the open helicopter door as soon is it slides wide enough - even though they're still not _technically_ touching the ground yet - Thompson, behind him, makes a loud berating noise that Alex ignores completely, happily rolling his joints around with a slight mischievous air as he walks to an almost informal attention before the Sargent. The Sarge, apposed to what Alex usually sees from the stern man, is equally as lax with his stance as they salute each other.

"Lynx." The man stares at him for a long moment, unable to stop a bit of mellow amusement leaking into his eyes as he takes in Alex's sleepy looking form. Alex blinks.

"You scared the shit out of my men, you little runt." The Sargent shakes his head at him, and his tone is admonishing but not loud. Like he's trying to tell off a kid that punched a bully in the school playground. He can't do it properly, because you can't really tell someone off for doing something 'bad' with good intentions.

"Oops." Alex deadpans, and he immediately folds his lips in on each other as the Sarge raises his eyebrows at him. He hadn't meant for that to slip out.

"14 armed men captured a...friend of the Royal Family and my best Unit. Within what had been reported to be somewhere between 4-7 minutes: 6 were dead, 5 were unconscious and 3 were found trapped under a crate of smuggled contraband." The Sergeant clasps Alex's upper arms in a tight, warm grip, looking him straight in the eyes.

"Lynx, you're a _bloody one-man army_!" A gentle hint of Scottish brogue slipped in between the sharp grin of the Sergeant, and Alex gives a slight shrug, pretty relaxed under the unexpected praise. He's not used to being thanked or doted on with much special treatment after he pulls off something stupidly impossible. He kind of likes it. It makes him feel entitled to the beret he's wearing, to the almost-pyjamas he gets to wear for a bit and the fondness that the Sergeant is pretty much lavishing him in (when compared with his usual stoic-ness).

"Still got the shit kicked out of me, though." He says bluntly, and the Sergeant barks a short laugh Alex is becoming familiar with connecting to soldiers. He pats Alex's arms one last time before stepping back to introduce the man next to him.

He's just as tall as the Sarge, with cropped salt-pepper hair and there's a pair of sunglasses hanging in the pocket of his blazer. Obviously not a native Brit, then, if he had bloody sunglasses on him for a trip to Wales.

"Colonel Walter," the man introduces himself, an American accent thickly coating his words that Alex connects to what he thinks is Brooklyn. Or maybe Boston. He always gets those two mixed up.

Alex shakes his hand in a strong grip, curious but not letting himself show. "Lynx." His voice sounds extra English compared to Walter's, now, and it's slightly odd to his ears.

"I'm with the US Navy Seals. The people that you've put away-" wether it's in the ground or in jail is not specified, "-have been on our list for a while now. They took out 3 of my best men almost a year ago near an overseas base. I'm here to thank you on the behalf of those men's families, friends and my government."

Walter grins at him, a shine of relief and satisfaction in his eyes as he nods at Alex. "You're a brave soldier, Lynx. One of the good ones. You've got a friend in the U.S Navy if you ever need one. A whole lot more people back home wanted to thank you, too, but I think you get the message."

Alex feels warm in the cheeks as he quirked a slightly embarrassed smile at the Colonel, awkward at this too-personal thanks. He shrugs slightly in lieu of a worded response, and both men chuckle at him, but not unkindly.

"Right, you need to go and get back to your Unit, soldier." The Sarge dismisses him, turning in to converse with the American and gesturing Thompson over from the helicopter over to report. Alex salutes one last time, and stuffs his hands in his pockets as he strolls out of the airfield.

He's not too eager to get back to the Hut, because he knows he's going to be absolutely smothered in attention and too much scrutiny from a still slightly annoyed Croc. There's also the fact that he has no idea where Yassen is or what he's spilled to B' about him - not to forget what A-Unit must be being told from an overreacting Panther.

The ground is soft today, but not muddy or clumpy like usual. And the sky is a pale blue dotted with white fluff, the air is fairly warm and overall Alex is very unsettled. It's easy to see that it's a perfect scene about to be ruined.

"Oi! Lynx!" A voice bellows from outside of Hut One, and Alex winces as he realises he's just caught B-Unit on their break. Panther pounds down the steps to shake him by the arms, grinning widely and squirming around in a little happy jig. "You're back!"

Alex tries not to squirm himself, discomfort and anticipation running trails up his spine. His eyes dart around to try and see into the Hut. "I'm back." He reaffirms, rather pointlessly.

Panther's grin lessens in its intensity, simmering contently as he tugs Alex forward towards the steps. "C'mon, mate, the whole Unit's waiting for ya's."

Alex groans under his breath, which makes Panther chuckle mischievously. "Aww, don't be shy, Lynx. You're only going to be mother-henned within an inch of your life."

Alex groans louder. "Shut up, Panther!" He says, whining slightly, but Panther doesn't bother replying. He's already thrown the door in, dragging a reluctant Alex behind him.

He's quite immediately dragged into a stare off with a squinty-eyed Croc, standing only a handful of inches in front of him. Alex has the realisation that he should have thrown the manila folder tucked into his waistband out of the bloody helicopter when he'd had the chance. It feels too heavy, now, sitting there.

Bear ignores the tension in the room, immediately gripping Alex's forearms and shaking him much like Panther did. Alex begins to wonder if this is less than accidental, and that everyone has been informed of his fragile ribs and mysterious shoulder injury. Probably.

"Good to see you up 'n about, mate." Bear rubs his knuckles on Alex's head through the beret, skewing it with the force of his noogie. The tall man grins down at him, and Alex pouts slightly. Bear seems to be of the same impression that Alex is...yuck... _adorable_.

"You, too." Alex knocks the hand off his head, not caring that his beret goes with it. Their Hut floor is always cleaned regularly, so it wouldn't get too dirty.

"Lynx." Croc calls his attention back. Alex shuffles under the man's unrelenting bright stare. His eyes look unnervingly green in his glare.

"Croc." Alex parrots his tone. Croc's jaw tightens.

"Can I talk to you? Outside?" He asks.

Alex has never seen Croc look so frightening. His face is completely stony, his dark eyebrows are furrowed and the green of his irises look absolutely startling. Every detail is sharp and cold.

"Um." Alex stutters, fingers twitching and brain chugging along furiously to reach a response that's a reasonable way of saying 'no!'.

Croc keeps staring through him. Alex gives in with an inward shriek. He can already feel that this little talk that Croc wants to have is going to be extremely and excruciatingly exhausting.

"I guess?" He mumbles, and isn't all that shocked when he's being dragged out of the Hut immediately. Instead of stopping on the little porch, however, Croc surprises Alex by continuing to walk through Camp, letting go of Alex's wrist after they'd touched soil again. Alex's eyes are bouncing around his surroundings desperately, noticing in his hypersensitive state that the leaves are starting to turn a very rich green and some of the fluffy white clouds are obscuring wispy grey ones and that the soft thud of their boots against the ground is too loud combined with all of the other noises in Camp.

Croc stops walking once they reach the lake, and sits himself down on the short wooden peer over the too-soft sand/dirt bank of the water itself. He doesn't turn around to make sure Alex is still there, and part of Alex tells himself he should just run - far, far away from here.

But Alex is tired of running.

So he sits a foot apart from Croc, half-mindful of his bruised leg, and waits for him to say something. The Unit leader stares out over the lake for minutes, face unmoving and eyes trained on one spot with the precision of a man with a perfect shot. Alex thinks Croc could have been a sharpshooter if his skills as a Field Medic weren't so miracule-inducing - he's been told stories like bible psalms about Croc stitching and wrapping and cleaning and blocking up wounds and making splints and slings and crutches out of weird things and his split-second decision making and and and-...

Basically, when Croc has a life thrust into his hands, he saves it.

Alex can only dream that one day he'll have that same courage.

"How many missions have you really been on? And don't bullshit me, Lynx."

Alex doesn't startle when Croc finally speaks, in fact it takes him a second to even comprehend that anything was said at all. Croc hasn't moved at all, his eyes are still staring at the flat navy-grey of the lake, still looking like he's meditating.

There's a lump sitting in Alex's gut, in his chest, in his throat.

He doesn't want to do it this way. He wants Croc - calm and objective and neutral - to just hold out his hand for the folder of his medical history, and read through it silently, and not ask any questions.

Alex doesn't think he'd have any of the right answers.

"10." He mumbles, deciding to follow Croc's idea and stare out at the marbling surface of the lake. "Give or take a couple of...accidents."

There is a very thick, permeable silence as Alex's shoulders throb with how he tightens them. And then Croc suddenly spins around with a fire lit in his eyes and his face ashen. And though he's angry, he still speaks calmly and slowly.

"All in one year?"

Alex hesitates. He can tell that this is a question where there is a right and wrong answer too. "Yes."

Oops, wrong answer.

Croc buries his face into his palms and swears low and repeatedly, fingers arching as they dig into his face a little bit, arms so tense it looks painful. Alex doesn't really know what to do, so he just shifts uncomfortably, eyes slowly trailing around them to see if he could get away with taking off.

He doesn't, though, and Croc collects himself and turns to face Alex properly. Alex can't hold his stare.

"That's illegal, Lynx." Croc says lowly, and something bitter runs havoc up Alex's chest until it comes flooding out of his mouth.

"Everything they've done to me has been fucking illegal, Croc, and the lack of rest periods is very far from the worst." Alex is starting the feel hysterical, now, his chest heaving with short breaths and self deprecating chuckles and he thinks his hands might be shaking a little bit, too.

"Fucking hell, Lynx," is all Croc can up with. He sounds shaken.

Alex snorts. "It was."

There's a dark, cold silence as Croc's mind tries to swirl past the stuttering halt it's been brought to, and Alex tries to bite through his lips to shut himself up because talking about it filled him with such horrible anger that he just couldn't stand it.

"You're Cub."

It was so quiet Alex almost missed it, but as it filters through his ears he tenses madly and swivels his head to find Croc looking at him in sudden realisation. At Alex's swift response, Croc pales several shades lighter and his hands form fists so tight the knuckles are white.

 _("'6 are real bastards, Lynx, you should try and avoid them from now on. We had a kid sent here about, what, about 10 months ago? It was very hush hush, but we managed to squeeze out of the old Sargent once he'd left, that SIS were using Cub - the kid - for suicide missions.")_

 _("Bloody awful, if you ask me. He kept up ridiculously well, but he was so unhappy. Ill for some of the course, I think. Might have been depressed. God knows that rookie unit of his - bunch of jealous newbies, really - didn't make things better for the kid.")_

Alex does the first thing that comes to mind.

He runs.

 **PLS REVIEW ! AND FOLLOW AND FAV ! I LOVE YOU GUYS !**


	13. Chapter 13

**Ahhh this is has been such a busy time for me, so sorry I haven't managed to post this sooner! Exam stress and counselling has taken up quite a bit of time. I've just done 40% of my drama gcse this year.**

 **why the fuck did I have to choose drama, anyway? I'm an idiot**

 **anyway! Excitement! Angst! It's the big reveal!**

 **next chapter: we see what Yassen's been up to.**

Alex is about 53 seconds into his dead sprint - already deep inside the forest framing the camp, at the speed he's going - when he realises he has yet to take a breath since he'd been found out. At 54 seconds, he stumbles flat on his face as a single intake of air causes his chest to spasm with coughs and heaves. 55 seconds, and his bullet wound starts throbbing to the irregular beat of his heart.

With shaking arms, Alex drags himself into the crook at the bottom of a tree and curls his weak and disorientated body into it. His teeth chatter together with exhaustion, his eyelids flutter madly and his vision blurs every leaf and branch together until the world is one spinning mass of colours.

There's a ringing in his ears, so so sharp and so so disorientating, and he can feel it all through his body and all through his brain. Behind that ringing, he distantly notices the sound of footsteps thumping madly through bushes and crisp grass, and a voice calling out, but he can't do anything about it. He is paralysed by a fear that he's never felt so strongly in his life.

Alex wonders for just a moment if this is what dying feels like.

And then a pale, handsome face is leaning over his and telling him to breathe slower and shorter, and Alex tells himself to stop being such a bloody drama queen and to calm the fuck down.

But he can't. Croc's hands are gripping his arms, his knees are caging Alex's and his forehead is resting against his and it's oddly soothing, like a cold flannel over a headache, but everything is still so sharp and so bright and so colourful, so red, so much red Alex thinks his eyes are bleeding, burning, everything is burning, everything is on fire, _she_ is on _fire_ -

"-Lynx! Cub! Don't go wherever you're going right now, kid, you're not there, you're right here, I'm right here, we're both right here, in a forest in Wales, we're both in a smelly, muddy, overly patriotic forest in Wales in a camp for fit, violent British twats-"

Alex's breathing catches completely in his throat, then, and there is a horrible empty silence where all Alex can hear is his own stillness, and he feels a little bit like he might be about to let out a sob, but it is far from a sob that comes out.

Alex sucks in a breath, deep, and _giggles_. "You're a- you're a twat-"

Croc sags against him in relief for a moment, before he leans back and pivots around to kneel right in front of Alex, one thigh pressing up against his. He breathes shortly, like he was the one to have just hyperventilate, and as Alex sobers he realises it's because the Unit Leader is really properly looking at Alex for the first time: the young face, the soft skin - calloused and scarred and bruised, but undeniably youthful - the fragile bones, the creaseless forehead, the stuttering rise and fall of his lean chest, and his hysterical giggling.

And Alex has never seen Croc - or anyone - look so deeply empathetic towards him in his life.

"I'm sorry." Croc whispers. His eyelids flutter rapidly with the need to screw them shut in a grimace, but he refrains so he can keep looking at Alex. Maybe eye contact is supposed to help...whatever it is that's wrong with Alex. "I'm so sorry for what they've made you do, Lynx. You didn't deserve it as Cub, you don't deserve it now. I'm sorry." It's quiet and hoarse, and the words themselves should mean nothing to Alex because he's only known Croc for 2 weeks, but for some reason this moment resonates so deeply within him that Alex feels as if Croc is the only person in the world that will ever understand what MI6 has done to Alex. What Alex has done to himself.

"It's okay." Alex leans back against the tree, and digs his fingers into the earth beneath him. He feels drained, tingly, and on the thinnest edge of numbness that left him feeling just a sliver of self-pity and anxiousness. "They're done with me." He says loosely, as if throwing away a child spy is as simple as throwing away a chipped glass or a cracked phone - still functioning, but not quite reliable anymore. "I've served my purpose, so now they've just tucked me away where no one would look for a 15 year old MI6 agent."

Croc swallows, twice because his throat is quite dry, and lays a hand on the top of Alex's head until he tilts it to meet his eyes. Alex's twisting anxiety settles some as he sees that Croc's unusually stressed state has reverted back to his quiet, calm, not-quite-cold-not-quite-warm self. Alex is certain, especially now, that Croc has a very impressive degree in Psychology, because that keenly aware but impassive disposition had to be trained.

"15?" Croc says quietly, as if saying it louder would make Alex startle and de-age spontaneously, and though it's supposed to be a question they both know that it doesn't require any confirmation from Alex. Not that Alex is in any state to help out on that front. He doesn't think he's quite lucid at the moment.

"It was my birthday, you know. Couple days ago. I missed it." Alex mumbles, eyes searching past Croc's intense green eyes and up into the sky peaking through the trees. It's sunny and clear, and quite the opposite of everything Alex wants it to be. He wants his pathetic fallacy, damnit! He wants to be able to disguise the fat, ugly, wet tears collecting at the corners of his eyes with rain or bad lighting because of the thunder clouds or maybe this conversation should have been saved for a dark, cold, dreary night.

"Oh?" Croc hums, hand slowly retreating as he swivels around to sit next to Alex against the big tree trunk. He moves his hand behind Alex's head, to shield his still fragile skull from getting knocked any further; to subtly check for bumps and lumps and blood; to reassure him.

Alex's heart jumps through his throat, creating quite the blockage of air to his brain, which could be the only reason why he's even talking about his sad, pathetic life with Croc.

"I hate birthdays." Alex whispers. Croc is sitting next to him, the closest he'd been with someone that didn't want to kill him in...too long, and Alex is so so tired of running his thoughts around his head in circles.

"When I was little, I'd never tell anyone at school when my birthday was because I was embarrassed. Everyone had parties and their parents bought them toys and clothes or trips somewhere, and they always asked about what you got for _your_ birthday. And I didn't have parties, I didn't have parents, I didn't have toys, and the only trips my Uncle took me on were to ditch me in the slums of foreign countries and make me talk my way out. Immerse me in the language." Alex laughs bitterly, and it is nothing like the hysterical giggle from before. It is sad and mourning and so angry, so regretful, and he hates that he can't stop himself. "I just used to think I got lost easily. Then I thought that he _wanted_ to lose me, so I'd just find some quiet, dark alley and hide and cry for a bit until he came back and apologised for losing me and we did it again the next day. Before he died, I'd thought that it was all because he forgot me easily. That I was forgettable. I-"

Alex breaks off into a moan of distress, and lifts shaking hands to scratch down the rough tree bark behind him. "But Jack would still make me a cake even when I told her I didn't celebrate my birthday. I'd forget I'd even have a birthday if she didn't make me that cake."

"...and so you forgot this year...?"

There is a sad silence as Alex chews through his lip, begging himself to stop this torture and to get back up and keep on running. But instead he leans his aching head on Croc's warm shoulder, that hand still rubbing his scalp softly, and tears his bloody fingers from the tree behind him to bury and twist them in the fabric of Croc's shirt.

"We got kidnapped." His fingers rolls a button around. "She died." The thread becomes loose. "They made me watch." The button falls off, and Alex's hands just keep twisting and turning.

A head lays over his own, and in the silence of the forest, through blurry eyes, the red of Alex's vision slowly recedes into browns and greens as a thumb rubs up and down the back of his head. He's so confused - he can't quite understand where he is, who he is, who he's with, why he's with them, and what he's saying. It's all just quite overwhelming, and Alex is just so young, and he hasn't been held so reassuringly in what feels like forever (and probably is), and that's the only thing that is making this okay.

"Your friend, Yassen-" Croc starts lowly, but Alex cuts him off.

"He's not my friend. He's the assassin that killed my uncle." And as angry as Alex wants to sound, he comes across as indifferent and maybe even oddly grateful, and it disgusts him. Croc's shoulder twitches with the rest of his body in a very tightly controlled reaction.

"Lynx-"

"Cub. Lynx isn't me. I'm Cub. Alex Rider is Cub. I'm Alex Rider, so I'm Cub. Not Lynx."

Croc nods slowly against the top of Alex's head. He's very good at this close-contact and affection kind of thing, and Alex wonders if he does it a lot. He doubts it. It feels too special to be a common occurrence.

"Cub," Croc corrects. "If we'd have known, we wouldn't have let him be with you in the hospital room and we wouldn't have let him go free-"

"No, don't, he saved my life at least twice."

Croc frowns, contemplatively, but he's not quite as confused as most people would be at this contrasting description of character. "He said that you thought you watched him die, too."

Alex tenses against Croc's side.

"Is that something you saw a lot? People dying?" As blunt invasive as the words may be, it's really anything but. Croc's tone is so mild and empathetic, mildly distant and not triggering, and very purposeful. It's hard to lie to him, especially with Alex as vulnerable and messed up as he is now.

"Always."

Croc pulls Alex tighter against his side, determination seeping through him and into Alex and managing to miraculously in still within him a hope that despite being found out, despite being exposed as a damaged little kid, despite being hurt and weak, things don't have to end in this moment. Life isn't going to stop now that Croc knows who Alex is. The world will keep spinning.

"Okay. That's okay. I've seen death too, okay? I know it's hard. Harder for you, because it wasn't your choice. Not your consequences to have to deal with. But I'm going to help you get out of this, Cub, alright? We're going to do everything to get MI6 facing retribution for this. You're part of B-Unit, and we protect our own."

"You still consider me a part of B-Unit?"

Croc cracks a smile as Alex starts to wilt in exhaustion.

"A skinny runt like you? Of course. We've got a habit of picking up strays, you know."

"So I'm a stray now?"

Croc breathes slowly as Alex's eyes fall shut against his shoulder, red stained fingers falling limper and limper.

"Not anymore."

 **Hope that lived up to everyone's expectations. Please be a dear and leave me some fat, juicy reviews! Tell me what you think might happen next! Shoutouts for the closest/funniest idea about plot!**

 **If you have any further questions about this story, feel free to DM me, I might take a little to respond but I'll try my best to get back to you as soon as possible!**

 **~ur boi**


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